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queenshelby · 1 year

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Yes! Mr Murphy (Rewritten)

PART FOUR: THE ESSAY

Pairing: Cillian Murphy x Reader

Warning: Angst, Age Gap, Teacher x Student, Mentions of Depression, Anxiety

PLEASE COMMENT AND ENGAGE!

PLEASE NOTE THAT I HAVE REWRITTEN THIS STORY AND PART TWO CAN BE FOUND HERE (rewritten).

A week had passed and you had settled back into drama school without any problem whatsoever which, to you and your best friend Emma, was a surprise.

You had told Emma everything. You told her about the night you spent with Cillian three weeks ago, you told her about who he was and you told her exactly how you felt about this man being your lecturer now. It bothered you and you desperately wanted to quit, feeling torn about the attraction you still felt towards him while being with James.

Luckily for you, however, Emma was the voice of reason. Like always, she supported you, retained your secrets and reminded you that it would just be for four months and then he would move on and so would you. The semester would be over by the end of November. It was your final one and you would probably not see him again after that.

“Don’t forget that you are on a scholarship. You need this and, no doubt, this class will help you with your acting skills” is what Emma reminded you of and, since you were grateful for the place you were in these days, you agreed with her. She was right. You needed this in order to leave your past behind as, just like Emma, you went through the so called “foster system” in the US which was nothing short of horrific.

Both, Emma and you immigrated to the United States without a family to support you. You arrived as refugees at the same processing centre when you were just ten years old, making you both unsuitable for adoption which was largely due to the fact that most families approved for adoption wanted babies or toddlers under the age of three.

As such, you both moved from one foster home to another and the last of them was the worst for you. Your so-called foster parents were strict and any time you did not obey to their rules, you were punished for it. Food was withheld from you and, on occasion, you were even beaten to the point where your skin turned blue. During this time, you had been to hospital five times and no matter how often you complained, nothing changed until you ran away.

You had nowhere to stay for a while and then, when you turned sixteen, you moved out into a home designed for girls like you. It was a home for young women who went through abuse and this was exactly where, after several years, you reunited with Emma.

The facility provided excellent care for anyone who needed it but, on occasion, you felt somewhat worthless and ashamed about having lived there. Thus, you eventually took not one, but three jobs while furthering your studies at night through a state-run school. You moved out shortly after that and the college you went through helped you and Emma to apply for a scholarship abroad.

Together with eight other students in the state, you received some funding to attend different universities and schools across Europe, for which the ones based in Dublin became your choice.

Unlike London, Dublin was affordable for you both. You were now sharing a tiny studio apartment, and the money you received alongside your scholarship helped a lot.

You were an excellent dancer and, because of it, you now only had to have one rather than three jobs to support yourself, making your life relatively easy in comparison to your past.

In accordance to James and Lorraine however, who were rich and entitled, you still worked too hard. You had nothing in common with them and, even though James had been dating you for years, he always criticised you and your life choices.

He criticised you for having run away from your foster-home. He criticised you for working forty hours per week and he criticised you for saving money almost religiously.

On occasion, he also criticized your looks and the fact that you dressed too plainly. Your clothes were largely second hand, a mix of denim, sneakers, and plain coloured shirts. You owned two dresses, both black and wearing make-up was a rarity for you and you were told by your boyfriend that you should be making more of an effort for him.

But then, why should you? He never made an effort for you and being with him made you wonder whether you could ever leave your past behind. He had no idea how good his life had been while the memories of your past kept haunting you, playing with your mind.

You reflected on your past quite often. It was what kept you grounded even when you were around people like James and Lorraine. But speaking about this pain was something you struggled to do ever since you opened up to James about your upbringing. It was almost like he was embarrassed by you because if it and this hurt more than the bruises you sustained all those years ago.

Unfortunately for you though, reflecting on your past was something you were required to do as part of your first essay in PRAC300. You had to write about yourself, in a creative kind of way, drawing parallels between any painful events you encountered and a fictional character you were reading about. You had to write about how you felt in the midst of a difficult situation and then describe how you would show your emotions about such events in front of others.

Why this was relevant to your acting skills you did not know, but you wrote down what you thought anyway without putting much effort into your work. You made something up and when you submitted the paper to Cillian, you also chose to ask him about the curriculum for this unit moving forward. Again, you were playing with the idea of quitting now, but you weren’t quite sure how.

Until such day, you had largely ignored him and he had ignored you. In class, he pretended that you did not exist and rarely ever called you out to answer any questions. Without your knowledge though, this was his very own defence mechanism. It was his way of coping while he adjusted to the fact that he was meant to be teaching you now and by asking him about the essay and upcoming unit content, you took him off guard.

In addition to your questions about the curriculum though, today was also the day where, even if this particular essay was not in play, you could no longer have ignored him as, just last night, photos of him on a date with a fellow actress emerged on Twitter.

Of course, you took no interest in Twitter, but other disappointed students like Lorraine shared this information with you before class. The actresses’ name was Sophie O’Callum and she was currently filming in Dublin. Sophie was in her late thirties which, to you, seemed like an appropriate age for Cillian. She was blonde, skinny and incredibly good looking, creating a fair bit of jealously amongst your peers and this emerging jealousy quickly became evident to you during class.

Usurpingly, after hearing the news, Lorraine was rather upset about the date. She was now trying it on hard with your fellow lecturer and this, in itself, became amusing when Cillian shut her down.

It was obvious to you that he was annoyed by her and whilst you felt sorry for her, you also secretly enjoyed the fact that he retained his professionalism in class especially when Lorraine made advances towards him.

But, that’s not to say that you were not a little jealous too about Cillian’s date with an equally famous actress and you did not know why. You only ever slept with Cillian once and the fact that he was seeing someone else should not have bothered you. But did it. It upset you and, thus, when you finally walked into his office after class to ask him about the essay and unit content, you had to put on an act. You had to pretend that you did not care about his date and, for all you knew, he probably bought it.

***

“Hey Y/N, how can I help you?” Cillian asked after you walked into his office before shutting the door behind you.

“You look like you had a big night” you observed while watching him rub his eyes for the millionth time that day. He did this all throughout class and now he did it again, right in front of you.

“What makes you say that?” he wondered.

“You look a bit dusty” you pointed out with a giggle in order to lighten the mood.

“I may have had a few too many pints, but don’t tell the dean, alright?” Cillian teased, knowing that you would not say a word to the school’s principal.

“As if I would” you pointed out nonetheless before bringing up his date. “Although, you do realise that the pictures of you and Sophie O’Callum are all over the internet, right? You both looked drunk and knackered” you laughed but Cillian simply furrowed his eyebrows.

“Seriously?” he asked after picking up his phone and googling himself.

“Don’t you follow yourself on socials?” you wondered as you watched what he was doing.

“I don’t have social media” Cillian chuckled before telling you that he was too old for it, which was a comment that amused it.

“Oh please” you laughed which was when he quickly and somewhat unexpectedly addressed the rumours he was reading.

“Just for the record though, this was not a date. We went out for drinks and then we went our separate ways” he pointed out and, whilst you secretly felt relieved about what he was saying, you put on your acting hat and furrowed your eyebrows.

“And you are telling me this why?” you asked as if you were not interested in what he had to say and Cillian bought it and snapped out of it.

“Good question” he said before asking why you were in here to see him.

“I have a question about the essay which I handed in earlier today” you said before carrying on. “How are my emotions relevant to this class?” you asked and, before you could point out to him that you felt uncomfortable with the essay topic, Cillian began to explain.

“Well, learning how to act starts with learning about emotions and how to display them on screen or on stage. Often actors can draw from their own experiences and…” he said just before you interrupted him.

“But this stuff is personal” you blurted out to which Cillian simply shrug his shoulders.

“It’s part of the curriculum Y/N. I didn’t write those essay templates. I don’t even get to grade them” he informed you, causing you to sigh.

“But you will read them?” you wondered.

“Yes. I will read them and then pass them on for grading, with my comments…” Cillian began to explain and you interrupted him again.

“Fuck” you spat. “We slept with each other and I don’t want you to know about my past and my fucking emotions” you told him and, to your surprise, Cillian reacted in a gentle kind of way.

“Y/N, I won’t judge you for whatever happened to you in the past. What you write in your essay is confidential and whether we slept with each other or not is irrelevant. We both agreed to put this one-night stand behind us and that is what I am doing, alright?” he said and this was all you needed to hear before storming out of his office.

Three days later…

Three days had passed and, like most Mondays, you arrived at school early that morning. You had just been for a run, showered and sat down with your lunchbox, which is when you saw Cillian walk into the lecture hall with a cup of coffee in his hand.

He was surprised to see you there and, after putting down his mug, he approached you.

“Y/N,” he murmured almost nervously.

“Cillian. Good Morning” you smiled and, after engaging in a little small talk, he addressed the elephant in the room.

“After class, could we, maybe, talk about your essay submission please” was what he said and your heart immediately skipped a beat.

“Yes. Sure. I will see you at your office then? What time works for you?” was your response and, within seconds, you locked in a time while, the truth was, that you had no idea about what you were going to tell him. What was it that he needed to hear from you, you wondered? The truth? You weren’t going to give him that. He was better off failing you and get the professor to give you a bad grade.

So clearly, this was not going to go anywhere and, just as you were sitting in Cillian’s class again, you reflected on all the pain you felt when thinking back at when you were a young teenager.

It was this kind of pain you did not want him to know about so you sat there, awkwardly, like a pathetic loser, raising your hand, answering questions, to make up the credits that you would need after he failed your essay.

You put on act and, luckily for you, he never called you out that day. He left you be, sitting quietly at the back of the class room and then, without giving it any thought whatsoever, you were the first one out the door after a two-hour session, wanting to avoid him at all cost.

Yes, you needed to go and see him at his office. But you had no intention to actually do so, at least not now while your heart was racing and anxiety took over your anxious brain. You had no idea what to tell him and simply wanted to be left alone right now.

“Will I see you in ten?” Cillian reminded you nonetheless in passing as the students behind you were all hanging back, chatting and joking with the others. Lorraine, in particular, attempted to put on an act of her own, flirting with Cillian again.

“Yes, I will see you then” you confirmed nervously before you quickly made your way to the ladies room.

The lady’s lavatory followed a dull theme of light green. It was dated and made you feel a little nauseous.

You were nervous about meeting with Cillian about your essay and thus splashed some cold water on to your face before taking deep breaths. Then, when you looked into the mirror you saw the ghost of a girl who had died a long time ago.

Your face was gaunt and all your features were sunken in. Your eyes, once your best feature, were the only things that seemed to stand out now, as if you were just that, all vacant and lifeless. There was nothing else to look at. You were already disappearing and realised that you were all bones and baggage now, made up of shadows and secrets and nothing, nothing at all.

Then, you recalled what your dance coach had said to you just recently, telling you that you were one of the best dancers in class, but you lacked emotion. You lacked expression and you certainly lacked happiness. It was obvious to him, which is why he suggested an acting class to you. But perhaps acting skills were not what you needed. Perhaps you simply needed some happiness in your life, but felt as though you were not entitled to it.

Then you remembered, that, just a few weeks ago, you did feel alive and happy for one night only and this was the night you had spent with Cillian.

It was strange, exciting and sensual and certainly felt different to when you were with James who did not help the way you felt within your own body. You were insecure and, at least in your mind, there was nothing special about you.

Being with James was like a bad habit, just like smoking. You kept him around and went back to him simply for the fact that he provided something to you which you were familiar with. He provided structure, security and you adored his family.

But he did not excite you. Life did not excite you. It never did. It was painful to be who you were and, thus, you wanted to break every mirror in the bathroom. Every time you saw yourself you saw the sad little girl you used to be and still were, caught in this viscous cycle of negative thoughts. You were afraid to take risks because it had been enshrined in to you throughout foster care that taking risks was wrong. You lacked your very own family and love and often wondered whether your life would change one day.

Then, eventually, you locked yourself into a stall to get away from your reflection. You knew that you were nearing another mental breakdown any minute now and began to scream, quietly, but loud enough for others to hear.

It was quarter past ten now and you had been there, inside the lavatory stall, for fifteen minutes. You put your head in your hands, your fingernails digging into your face, wanting to scream but not having the nerve to do it.

Traumatising thoughts about your past visited you just like bad dreams did at night. You were losing your mind or maybe you have lost it already.

Some time passed, but you could not tell how much. You just let yourself slip away from reality for a bit but then, suddenly, the sound of the restroom door swishing open made you jump, startling you out of your mad, mad thoughts. A familiar pair of brown leather shoes came to stop outside of your stall.

"Y/N? Are you alright?" were the words you heard next and, suddenly, time slowed. Your skin burned and your voice was shaky when you spoke.

"Please go. You are not meant to be in here" you said although you were not even sure if you really wanted him to, but you said it anyways.

"But I am in here now and I am not leaving. Lorraine said that you have been in the lavatory for over half an hour. So, please come out before I tare the door open and embarrass myself in front of the entire school” Cillian chuckled, but with great concern in his voice. He knew that you were simply hiding in there and he was clearly worried about you and your wellbeing.

“Fuck. Seriously?” you stammered as you got up slowly and opened the stall door.

“Yes! Seriously Y/N! Clearly, you are avoiding me and I thought that we talked about everything that we needed to talk about. But, I supppose I was wrong as, first, you submit this ridiculous paper to me and now you are hiding from me…’ Cillian then said quietly as he was facing away from you in what you presumed to be an effort to give you some privacy, but his eyes then met yours when you looked in the reflection of the mirror.

You saw yourself too, standing in front of him with tears in your eyes.

“Y/N, fuck, are you okay? Did something happen? Should I call the student counsellor?” Cillian then asked anxiously when he noticed your tears and you tried to hold his gaze, but his eyes were too intense so you looked down at the tiled floor.

"God no, please. I just had a moment. I am okay” you stammered quickly but Cillian looked sceptical.

"Do you want to talk about it?" he then asked politely but you shook your head.

“I think I embarrassed myself enough already” you then told him but his eyebrows furrowed quickly.

“You are afraid of your own emotions and I get that. Most people are. But you know what I have learned throughout many years of acting?” Cillian said quietly again but, this time, with a warm and gentle smile.

“What?” you asked, wondering where he was going with this.

“That accepting and dealing with your emotions is an integral part of life. Unless you do that, you are not going to be happy and you most certainly will struggle with the line of work you chose. So, if you need to talk with someone about the way you feel, then talk to me. I am here to listen and what happened between us doesn’t matter, alright? I am not the kind of person who sees things superficially and, I don’t know why, but I do care about you. I want you to be okay” Cillian then explained while gently rubbing his palms over your upper arms and you were glad for his words and the way he spoke them, in a gentle and caring way.

“Thank you, Cillian” you cried before taking a deep breath. “Can I redo my paper?” you then asked. You still did not want to talk with him about your past just yet and hoped that he would accept your offer in lieu of an explanation as to why you were so anxious right now.

“I was hoping that you would and I want you to know that, when you do, I will not judge you or think any less of you for what you write” Cillian reassured you and, after you gave him a quick nod and wiped away your tears, he walked towards the door of the lavatory and held it open for you.

“Can you redo the paper by Wednesday? I need to pass it on to the unit co-ordinator” Cillian then said with a slight chuckle and unbothered by the fact that he just came walking out of the ladies’ bathroom with you.

“I can. And I am sorry for my slobby work” you then said and Cillian smiled. God, he was so beautiful and you stared shamelessly at him. He should not have become a lecturer at school full of young female students. Temptation was going to come knocking at his door, hordes of twenty something year olds begging to be noticed, to be loved, to be fucked. It was insanity and, just like Lorraine and some others, you wanted him and that was another form of madness.

A few days later…

Eventually, Wednesday came about and, when it did, your first stop was at Cillian’s office. You had promised to hand in your revised paper by nine and so you did.

This time, your effort was six pages long and included a large spiel about the foster care system in the US and how it shaped you from an emotional perspective.

It also included an array of emotions you believed many others like you felt when dealing with every-day life and you drew an analysis about them to the character you read about.

It was a paper which you had prepared with great care and thought and, in the end, the references to pieces of literature within your writing impressed Cillian so much so that, on Thursday evening, he sent you a message on the school’s online portal.

“I am impressed. This was certainly worth the wait” he said with an emoji on the end and his message certainly made you laugh.

“I am glad, because it wasn’t easy to write knowing that you would be the one reading it” you responded quickly after you saw Cillian’s message pop up as a notification on your phone at around 10 o’clock that night and, the fact that he wrote to you that late made you wondered whether he was thinking about you.

Clearly, he had read the paper on Wednesday morning already before making his notes on it and sending it to the unit co-ordinator, so why did he only message you now? There must have been a reason for it, right?

Unbeknownst to you, there was most certainly a reason behind this message. Cillian had, indeed, been thinking about you and the truth was that he was taken by what you wrote in your essay.

He saw the care you took in writing down your every thought and your very own emotions and, whilst he could sense that you were hurt by the system, he did not consider you to be weak. To the contrary, he considered you to be much stronger than you thought yourself you were. You took matters into your own hands after the system had failed you. Unlike James, Cillian was impressed by your courage and soon realised why it was you who had been chosen for the scholarship.

You were determined and, whilst you struggled to come to terms with your feelings about what happened to you, you were emotionally intelligent. You knew what you needed to do and you knew about the bad influences in your life. You just had to act upon your desires, follow your goals and leave your pain and restraints in past.

As such, Cillian had nothing to add to your paper and thought about it every night since. There was something about you which intrigued him even more now and his thoughts about you were not just sexual anymore. His interest in you was on a different kind of level now and the feelings he was starting to have for you bothered him, causing him to supress his very own emotions.

He had to put on an act of his own, pretending that he was not interested in you but, every time he had a pint with his best mate Dermont, Cillian’s true feelings surfaced as, suddenly, the conversations they shared were about you.

Even though Cillian assured him that he had forgotten all about your short lived fling, Dermont did not believe him as his friend spoke about you with a lot of admiration.

In addition to that, Dermont also knew that Cillian was not the type of guy who would engage in one-night stands and then never think about them again. He must have liked you if he took you home, to his house that night. And he most certainly had not forgotten about you now that you were his student as every conversation about his work was also about you, your talent and the way you interacted with him.

A few days later…

Eventually, Friday came around and it was another day where you had a lecture in PRAC300 before commencing your on-stage experience for which you were each given an on-stage character role and a script to read.

The roles were allocated randomly and when you were assigned the role of a mother who had recently lost her child, you could not help but sigh. It was not a role you were confident to act out and, yet, you knew that you had no choice. You had to take the role just as the other students had to take theirs. This included James who, also, ended up with a role that he was unhappy about but, unlike you, he spoke about it in Cillian’s class.

“Cillian, man, I think there is a mistake” he said in an arrogant way. “This role should be given to a girl” James determined, causing Cillian to furrow his eyebrows.

“Why?” Cillian asked, seeing that James had been drawn for the role of a character named Tina.

“Because Tina is a girl. I am playing a fucking girl” James laughed but Cillian did not think that his comment was funny and neither did you.

“Not exactly James. The role is non-binary” Cillian explained before telling him that this was an acting class. “It is important for you to step out of your comfort zone” Cillian furthermore said before pointing out that two female students in the class are portraying male characters as well.

“Now, if I can get everyone to schedule a time with me for the next week so that we can go through your role, one on one, that would be fantastic. I intend to allocate half an hour to each student” Cillian said and, of course, Lorraine and some of the other female students were quick to snap up the first available spots, leaving them with next to no time to prepare.

Luckily for Lorraine, she was portraying a young female teacher who was in love with her student. It was a role based on a book you had read quite recently and the fact that she got this role was rather amusing to you. She had an interest in Cillian and it was basically a matter of roles in reverse, if only Cillian had known.

When it was finally your turn to book in a time with Cillian however, you realised that your work schedule clashed with his remaining availabilities and it was at this point that he made an exception for you which was something that got you talking.

“I give dance classes from 3 o’clock to 6 o’clock each day and I cannot get out of them. It pays the bills and I am teaching ten teens for their upcoming dance competition in Cork so I have no idea what to do” you told him after the last student left the room and, sure enough, he remembered your passion for dancing.

“You teach dance? I did not know that. Are you enjoying it?” Cillian asked surprised and you nodded.

“Yes. I love it” you told him while he looked at his calendar.

“Alright, so how about 7 o’clock on Thursday then? It is after hours but I could come in and see you here” Cillian offered and you were surprised by his suggestion.

“Is that not too late for you?” you wondered, knowing that he had children as well.

“Well, generally speaking, Thursdays and Fridays are good for me. My ex has the kids those days and, even if they were to come over, they are old enough to look after themselves for an hour or two” Cillian responded before telling you that they often do their own thing now that they are older, meeting up with friends after school and playing games at the local arcade.

“So, where do you teach dancing?” Cillian then wanted to know, being more chatty than usual.

“At the Dublin School of Dance. I teach contemporary dance and ballet” you told Cillian who, again furrowed his eyebrows.

“My daughter goes to that school twice a week” Cillian told you before showing you a photograph of her which he took during her last class.

“No way! I think I have met your daughter then” you said while Cillian was sliding through the photographs and you could immediately see the resembles of him in his daughter. They had the same pale freckled skin and light-coloured hair.

“Really?” he asked with great surprise and a hint of concern.

“Yes. She is in Miriam Mill’s class, isn’t she?” you asked and Cillian nodded before telling you that Miriam was leaving soon. She had an offer from another Dance School in London which she took.

“She is leaving, yes. But, your daughter will get another pretty awesome teacher soon, so don’t you worry” you then teased and Cillian furrowed his eyebrows quickly.

“Really? Is that new teacher good?” he asked without realising that you were going to be his daughter’s new teacher.

“She is the best” you joked before telling him that you would be taking on the classes for her age group in a couple of weeks.

“Talking about awkwardness” Cillian then said with concern, seeing that this may become a little weird but, to you, it meant nothing. If anything, you were looking forward to meeting Cillian’s daughter properly and preparing her for the dance competitions.

“Yeah, I mean, you could enrol her into another dance school if you like” you said nonetheless but he chuckled.

“And explain this to my ex how?” Cillian asked while cocking an eyebrow.

“Well, you could tell her that you slept with the ballet teacher who also happens to be your student at drama school. I am sure that would make quite a story” you joked and Cillian quickly reminded you to be discreet.

“Y/N, please…” he said while you laughed.

“God, relax Cillian. I am going to make sure that she has fun and excels with her routine for the finals. There is no bad blood between us and, like I said, nothing ever happened right? It was just sex, a one off, that is it. No one will ever know about it. My lips are sealed” you promised him and Cillian gave you a reluctant nod.

“Yes, it was just sex” he repeated quietly after ensuring that there was no one around. “So, Thursday, 7 o’clock then?” he then asked and you confirmed.

“Yes, 7 o’clock is great. Thank you. But I must go now. I am already late for training. Thanks Cillian” you said before grabbing your things and walking through the door.

To be continued… Please comment and engage. I love getting comments and predictions pretty please! Tag List

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ukrfeminism · 2 years

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5 minute read

The first red flag was the “dick pic”. Katie had no idea her 14-year-old son was communicating with strangers in secret on the Mermaids website, until she found several sexually explicit images on his phone.

Her autistic son, who had been teased at school for possibly being gay, had visited the school nurse, who in turn did what so many schools, local authorities and child mental health services across the country now do when presented with a gender-non-conforming child in distress: referred him to Mermaids.

The charity is the country’s best known transgender youth charity. It has basked in the support of celebrities such as Emma Watson and Prince Harry, and won generous grants from the National Lottery and the government.

Unbeknown to Katie, her son had joined the charity’s youth forum, a private online community for 12-19 year-olds who are struggling with gender issues. Parents and carers are not allowed. No proof of ID or age is required, only an email address.

Once signed up, he entered an online world where vulnerable children seeking support with others in similar pain, share their personal details, including phone numbers, email addresses and social media handles, under the apparently approving supervision of Mermaids moderators.

Screenshots seen by The Times also show users openly arranging to move their conversations about experimental drug treatments and medical transition on to even less supervised platforms, such as Discord, with the tacit approval of Mermaids moderators.

It was on Discord, an instant messaging social media platform that was started by gamers and now boasts about 350 million subscribers, that Katie’s son met the strangers who started sending sexual images and asking him to send them photos of himself in sexualised poses in his bedroom in return, which were then found by his mother.

“He felt they were his friends,” said Katie, a teacher. “It was after that I found all the Mermaids emails in his inbox, with the links to all these discussions [on the Mermaids youth forum.]”

The youth forum is promoted on Mermaids’ website as “a wonderful place to find community and allay fears”.

However, critics say it is an “irresponsible ‘Wild West’ free for all’ which allegedly fails the most basic online safety standards.

“Essentially, it is providing a space for children where it’s the blind leading the blind,” said Stephanie Davies-Arai, founder of campaign group Transgender Trend. “These children are not qualified to help other children with emotional and psychological issues. It’s hugely irresponsible.”

Mermaids promotes itself as a leading authority on LGBTQ issues, and is paid to train teachers, police forces, NHS staff and social services on dealing with transgender issues.

This week the Charity Commission confirmed it would be investigating Mermaids’ safeguarding practices, after receiving a number of complaints from parents.

One major red flag was its binder scheme. It emerged in an investigation by The Daily Telegraph earlier this week that the charity is sending potentially dangerous chest binders to children as young as 13 and 14, behind their parents’ backs. These are used by some women and young girls with gender dysphoria to flatten their breasts in a bid to appear more masculine but they carry serious health risks, potentially causing breathing difficulties and damage to healthy breast tissue, ribs and the spine.

Another cause for concern was the youth forum.

Confidential safe spaces can be vital lifelines for children to access support in the charity sector. Childline, for example, allows children to communicate anonymously with each other on message boards, subject to strict controls.

There is a time delay before a child’s post goes live, allowing moderators to screen the content. The house rules set clear parameters for discussion, forbidding any posts that talk, for example about self-harm as a coping method, or suggest that running away might be the right choice. Medical advice is forbidden — “even if something is safe for one person, it might not always be safe for other people” — and no posts are allowed about target-driven goals to change body shape as “it can make people feel competitive and encourage people to diet in unhealthy ways”. Children are not allowed to share any other ways to contact each other off the boards, and, crucially, the message boards are public.

Mermaids conducts its forum very differently.

On its website, Mermaids explains that “we sometimes suggest a young person uses an email address their primary carers have no access to” because some LGBTQ children live in “hostile environments” in which being outed may risk harm or even homelessness.

The charity insists it does not give medical advice. However, much of the discussion revolves around the idea of medical transition as a solution to various problems.

On the forum, which has around 700 members, children share their excitement at the prospect of starting hormone treatment. Introducing themselves, one child said: “I’m 15 and I’ve socially transitioned and I believe I’m getting my first blocker shot on Wednesday. (Fingers crossed!!!)

Mermaids continue to promote puberty blockers as a safe and reversible treatment, despite medical consensus that the long term impact on teenage development remains unknown.

In another post, under the subject heading “Forearm or thigh skin graphs [sic] Phalloplasty”, a young woman who identifies as male asks which part of the body is used to surgically create a penis.

“So I was wondering if anyone knew the difference between taking a skin graph [sic] from your forearm or thigh for phalloplasty? They had heard arm skin was preferred “but since I have permanent self harm scars I don’t think I’ll be able to.”

She is advised by another person in the group: “I really don’t think it will make a difference particularly because it will be 5 - 10 years before you get phallo. (I assume you want T [testosterone] and top surgery before),” adds the respondent, who then recommends some “really good videos on phallo” by a YouTuber.

When an unhappy youngster shares their mobile phone number, Snapchat and Instagram handles, it is left to another user — rather than a moderator — to warn them: “Are you sure it’s a good idea to post your phone number on here? There are over 700 people on this forum.”

In another post, under the topic “lonely”, one young girl posts her full email address and mobile phone number.

Once children sign up to the forum, they receive daily emails, highlighting the discussions taking place under headings such as “advice on unsupportive parents”.

Stephanie Davies-Arai, of the campaign group, Transgender Trend, said: “It’s a bit Lord Of The Flies, isn’t it? You’re letting children create their own little society, where they all support each other in a belief they probably learned online. They don’t have the maturity to recognise the harms of those internet forums.”

Parents expressed particular concern over the moderators’ alleged failure to intervene when users arranged to continue their relationships on other platforms.

In a post dated Jan 2020, a moderator using the name “Izzi J” interjected to advise the youngsters not to draw attention to the Mermaids connection, when they moved their conversation on to the unregulated chat rooms of Discord.

Izzi J wrote: “Great idea for you to have a Discord server together! I have to be a bit of a buzzkill here, you can’t call it Mermaids because it isn’t our server, run by us or affiliated with us. Give it a different name and you’re golden. Have fun :)”

In other posts, the same moderator talks about “the anti trans brigade”.

“Most people I know had no idea about trans issues until I came out and then the good people among them learned and changed how they viewed things. Some people are too lazy and bitter to change and that’s unfortunate.”

Having complained to the Charity Commission in 2020, Katie, not her real name, welcomed the watchdog’s decision to investigate further.

“I am cautiously optimistic that this time the Charity Commission will recognise unequivocally the harm being done to very vulnerable children,” she said.

Another parent, whose child was also referred to Mermaids, said: “Mermaids sees itself as the ‘hero’ or ‘rescuer’ of children, from ‘unaccepting’ parents. Anything that sidelines parents is a red flag.”

He said he was horrified to see the moderator’s response to Discord: “Discord is absolutely full of really grim self-harming and eating disorder servers [chat rooms], so just having vulnerable kids with body issues on discord is potentially a major risk.

“In contrast, Mermaids basically said, ‘what a great idea, off you go into this internet wild west, just you can’t use our name’. There was no concern for these young people’s welfare, they actually endorsed the idea of setting up a private server whose membership and rules would be completely hidden.”

The Times asked Mermaids to clarify the ages, training and background of the moderators who are responsible for supervising the forum, but the charity refused to respond.

In a statement, Mermaids said it was the victim of a “smear campaign.”

It said: “We’re in the midst of a targeted, cynical attack. Security of our platforms and safeguarding of young people is of the utmost importance to us and we continue to regularly review our processes and procedures to make sure our forums remain safe and secure. There are several layers of moderation checks before anyone can gain access to the forum, and anyone found to have fraudulently gained access to our platforms will be reported to the police immediately as a safeguarding concern.

“All of our moderators receive comprehensive training, including safeguarding training, and everyone using the forum has to comply with a strict code of conduct, which prohibits the sharing of personal information, including online identities.”

Mermaids emerged as a support group for young people receiving treatment at the NHS gender identity clinic based at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation. Trust, which has since been disbanded on the recommendation of an independent review.

Whistleblowers said they were alarmed by the charity’s alleged influence over the clinic’s leadership team, with some clinicians concerned that Mermaids was schooling young people on what to say in the consultation room, in order to access hormone therapies quicker.

Mermaids insists it does not encourage one particular treatment over another.

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sirenjose · 4 months

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Analysis of White Sand Street Asylum - Part 3

Includes Full Character Analyses for: Freddy, Kreacher, Emma, Emily, Leo, Robbie and Dolores, Kurt, Ada and Emil, Alice.

Beginning: Asylum Analysis Part 1

Previous: Asylum Analysis Part 2

Soon after, the evaluations begin.

1 of those being evaluated is Kurt Frank.

Kurt was born in Yorkshire, England to parents who, even when Kurt was young, constantly moved around. They went “from England to Italy, then to France, and then to England again”, with young Kurt always surrounded by “all kinds of adult travelers”. Unfortunately, his parents are described as never paying him much (if any) attention: “Whenever he looked up, he could only see the tight jawline of his parents and their hurried figures that never looked down”. As Kurt is described as “working class”, it is likely his parents were the type who spent all their time and energy on their work, and thus by the end of the day had none to spare for their son. This means they likely didn’t attempt to help Kurt to really understand all the foreign places they took him too. Based on how he was surrounded by “adult travelers”, it is likely much of what he encountered wasn’t a place for kids, and possibly due to his parents’ work.

Everything was huge, confusing, and overwhelming, leaving Kurt feeling “small and powerless and out of place”. This is no surprise considering the constant moving left Kurt with no stability, making him feel unsettled and disconnected, like he had no safe place to call home. He also had no guidance or support from his parents, leaving him feeling neglected amid chaos. And without any form of stability, he likely never stayed around in 1 place long enough to form any long-term relationships. Neither did he have much control over anything, as he was subject to his parents’ decisions.

Kurt’s backstory continues from here by saying “This early feeling of being ignored led Kurt Frank to develop a typical avoidant personality”. Avoidant personality disorder (APD) is characterized by severe and chronic social anxiety. People with this disorder have a long-standing pattern of social avoidance accompanied by hypersensitivity to negative evaluation (aka fear of criticism, rejection, ridicule, etc…) and low self-worth so pervasive that it defines who a person is. They will be easily and extremely hurt by any type of criticism in any situation. They avoid making new friends and trying new activities unless they’re absolutely sure they’ll be liked and accepted without rejection, criticism, or ridicule. They tend to be shy, quiet, “invisible” (aka tend to hide using their clothing or by staying in the background in social situations), and lonely, but they’re different from schizoid people. The avoidant person wants social contact but is afraid of rejection, whereas the schizoid or schizotypal person is completely indifferent to such contact.

Due to being ignored by his parents, Kurt turned to books to escape his reality and his fear of rejection. His backstory says it was also due to him having “trouble concentrating” and a disinterest in going outside. His favorite novel was Gulliver’s Travels, where he “imagined he was a great adventurer and refused to accept the actual situation”. In this world, he was the hero. There was no more feeling of not fitting in. A world where everyone accepted him. He was important. He received all the love and concern he wanted here. It was also a place where he could essentially design it however he wanted, and thus a place he understood perfectly well (compared to everything else).

Even though Kurt couldn’t make real friends, he was able to play with his imaginary ones, and his imaginary world continued to expand as he continued reading.

Eventually Kurt goes to college, but his “bushy mustache” causes him to argue with others often, leading to him being an “outlier”. Unable to get approval from others, this causes issues with his avoidant personality, and he starts avoiding going to school, something that disappoints his father. He attempted to stress the importance of college if Kurt wanted to be successful in the future, like they were, but Kurt didn’t care. He couldn’t handle the ridicule and rejection from his classmates. He couldn’t even talk about his problems to his parents because they didn’t understand nor care. They never had and they never would. His relationship with them had been strained for as long as he could remember, and this on top of his problems at school was overwhelming Kurt, who was left to handle it all on his own.

Without the proper emotional support or help from anyone, he funnels his emotions into horse racing, but Kurt “lacked the vision and brains to invest” and “lost all his living expenses and even owed a loan shark”.

This forces him to completely drop out of college. His parents, left with no choice, send him into the army hoping it would “correct his behavior”.

Initially, Kurt was likely quite unhappy with his situation. He didn’t want to deal with the increased social interactions, new people, new activities, and everything. But as usual, he didn’t have a choice. Fortunately, he had been able to bring his book with him, allowing him to escape from his new reality at least temporarily.

Eventually, Kurt decides to “boast” about his “adventure experience” to his comrades. There weren’t many ways for men at the barracks to amuse themselves with, especially when far from home and family, and Kurt thought this would “cheer everyone up”.

Initially, all goes well. The other men are “captivated” by his experiences, and he earns the attention and praise Kurt has always wanted, the approval he’s never received even from his own parents.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t last. The men eventually discover Kurt had been lying and the stories he shared were only from books he read, rather than experiences he actually lived through. His skills aren’t anywhere as good as he claimed, and the men in general don’t appreciate being tricked or lied to. Soon, Kurt becomes reviled and an outcast similar to how he’d been at college.

With Kurt’s avoidant personality once again triggered, his mental state deteriorates. He wants to prove them wrong. He wants them to know that he is a real explorer, and he has gone through all these things. He goes a bit off the deep end, and ends up getting into trouble.

Kurt had said he wanted to remain in the army for “as long as his health allowed”, but due to his increasing inability to differentiate between fantasy and reality, he is labeled as mentally ill and sent to White Sand Street Asylum. This is based on the title of deduction 9 being “Road-blocking ‘Dragons’” (dragons, like an enemy or threat), with the line “These giant, fanged...dragons! You can't stop an explorer!” essentially depicting him being taken away.

This is confirmed via the event Kurt’s Wondrous Journeys. In the event, he says White Sand Street is the center of his world. So, on the center of his map, he drew a circle to represent “the origin of my adventure, and surround it with triangles, representing trees” (via drawing a “1” under each triangle”). He later talks about people using “fears to stop you” and how “nothing but monsters and danger await you, should you ever leave”. It’s at this point he says, “If you turn these triangles upside down, they are the shape of a dragon's terrible fangs, a symbol of unknown terror, and the ultimate price—death” (and we know terror and death both happen at the asylum).

In the Asylum, we learn during his reassessment that he is indicated to have “Delusional Schizophrenia”. I’m not sure this is an actual thing, so I tried checking the translations of other versions (as best I as I could). So far, I think the more appropriate terms I saw were “delusions of grandeur” and “schizophrenia”.

Delusion of grandeur is a false belief in one’s power or importance. It may be a symptom of a mental health disorder and can cause confusion between what is real and what is not. The strength of a delusion is based on how much the person believes it. Specifically, a delusion of grandeur is a person’s belief that they are someone other than who they are, or a belief that they have special abilities, possessions, or powers.

Many types of mental health disorders can lead to delusions, including schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia is a complex disorder that causes people to interpret reality abnormally. They don’t know what sights, sounds, and experiences are real or what they are imagining. It usually involves delusions (false beliefs), hallucinations (seeing or hearing things that don’t exist), unusual physical behavior, and disorganized thinking and speech. With treatment, most symptoms of schizophrenia can greatly improve and reduce the likelihood of a reoccurrence.

In any case, Duke eventually asks Lorraine to discharge Kurt. Lorraine, who is currently the head of the asylum now that Duke has become a bishop, believes Kurt can’t be discharged due to the persistence of his delusions. Kurt claims “he had flown solo across the English Channel, possesses extraordinary survivalist skills, and is capable of the construction and operation of, including but not limited to, Blimps”. Lorraine adds that his delusions evolve “in a scale of grandiose when exposed to outside influences”. She worries, even though he is not violent now, he could pose a threat later due to his “deteriorating mental health stability and elevating delusions” and “eloquence in persuasion”.

But Kurt has other ideas. He has no desire to remain in the asylum, which he starts thinking of like he’s back at school, and is willing to do anything if it means getting out.

Life at the asylum hasn’t gotten any better.

We see in Kurt’s Wondrous Journeys how he describes the place: a “great gray structure” whose interior is all that many of the patients “have ever known”. The corridors are “long” and “lined with heavy, iron doors”, behind which the patients live, awaiting “inspection” from the “King”.

The “King” card we have during this event shows one side looking like a king, but the other is a nun. The card reads “They try to use love to lock other people down”. It is clear the “King” here is meant to represent Lorraine.

1 of the things still limiting the patients’ freedom is the medicine, which is likely represented by “Tea Time”. They were given that medicine at the “beginning” of each day.

The size of the rooms for the patients behind the “heavy, iron doors” were likely “only 52 inches long”.

As another side note, one of the other cards is of a chair that may symbolize the same one Emma used when she was getting electroshock treatment. I wonder if it could imply he got electroshock treatment while he was there as well?

Either way, we know Kurt does eventually leave the asylum to go to the manor.

What we do have is Kurt’s deduction 11. It talks about a “battle between Don Quixote and the Biscayan up close”, after which Kurt says “Obviously, I managed to get out of there”. Don Quixote being the man obsessed with becoming a knight and reviving chivalry who, in his delusional state, charges at windmills he mistakes for giants. Biscayan, who’s passing by, thinks he’s mad and, misunderstanding the situation, challenges Don Quixote to a duel. Don Quixote, driven by his delusions of grandeur, manages to disarm the Biscayan. Kurt is likely to represent Don Quixote. The Biscayan, symbolizing a skilled opponent, could represent Lorraine, who is the one fighting to keep Kurt at the asylum.

Maybe this means that Lorraine lost her argument or “battle” to keep him there, thus implying Duke forced her to let him go (or maybe Kurt somehow reasoned with her himself, in something like a battle of wits, and via his “eloquence of persuasion” was able to convince her to let him go).

Kurt may have even been the first patient to leave, potentially the same one mentioned in the asylum backstory. This is important as, after this first person, Lorraine, according to the asylum backstory, left her resignation in her office and disappeared. The Church quickly moved the remaining patients from the White Sands Street Asylum and closed it down (as ordered by the government after the locals questioned if the asylum should be allowed after Dolores’ killing spree).

Before the asylum closes, the events of Ada’s and Emil’s stories occur, though I do not know exactly when.

Emil was the youngest son of a poor couple, where he had 3 other siblings. The mother seems to have been suffering from a type of mental illness, and it was difficult for Emil’s father to care for her as well as 4 kids. As a result, he sold his youngest to an underground dog fighting ring. His new owners at first didn’t care for him, but this all changed after Emil snuck into the pit and managed to make it out alive. His owners, seeing the reaction of the audiences, decided to continue to utilize him that way for more money, and Emil was forced to grow accustomed to this life, where he saw himself more as another dog than a person.

He’d never known real love. He’d only ever been seen as an object that others only saw in terms of how to get value for themselves. All Emil knew was if he wanted to survive, he had to fight for it, and so he did. Living conditions were horrid, with him being forced to live in a “kennel” with “shackles locked around his ankles” and barely enough food to sustain himself with, and what he was given was of poor quality. He also wasn’t given proper treatment for his wounds, which he acquired plenty of by the vicious dogs in the ring that would always attempt to tear him apart without restraint, or to ensure he stayed healthy. He was on his own. His owners didn’t care if he lived or died. If he did, they could just get another dog and continue on their merry way.

Emil wasn’t satisfied with being a “plaything of nobles” and always forced to survive the dog fighting ring, so one day he manages to escape. Unfortunately, he ends up with a high fever and forgets everything, and this is when he’s taken “by the asylum who defrauded charity funds”.

The asylum uses a “staggering amount of sedatives on its patients”, including sleeping pills and tranquilizers, to keep their patients under control and from being able to fight back. Emil is so high on these that he feels like he’s “floating away”. They do this as they diagnose Emil with “manic fits” and “severe aggressive tendencies”. This is why they keep his hand “cuffed to the bed” and lock him in “solitary confinements known as the ‘Cages’”, which is only for the “most dangerous patients”.

He suffers greatly due to their painful treatments, but he “always accepted being manipulated obediently”. And then everything starts to change when he meets Ada.

Ada, unlike Emil, was from a “relatively affluent middle-class family” where “every step in her life has been strictly planned” by her doctor father and teacher mother. She didn’t have much of a childhood, as she had “few playmates her own age” and spent most of her time “communicating with adults or reading”.

She is sent to university, where she enters “the school's psychological laboratory for research”. As a medical genius, she is awarded “the position of assistant professor of psychology”.

This is likely because her father had been training her from a young age and had her watching him since she was at least 13.

Ada has been researching hypnotherapy and the “idea of eliminating a patient's pain or negative emotions with subliminal suggestions”. This is likely the 1st time she’s actually chosen something for herself, yet no one, not even her own father, a “leading authority in psychiatry”, “had much faith in me”.

She explains the issues she had with her research: “The patients provided by the academy where I studied couldn't be hypnotized while they were in pain, and after countless failures… I had to devise a new method...”. Unfortunately, her “private experiment was discovered and those people pulled the plug on my research”.

Ada thinks very lowly of other doctors who stop her from this research. Her goal is to help the mentally ill, while most other doctors just follow “the latest academic fads” and use the mentally ill for “turning profits”.

I imagine the reason for Ada’s desire to help people likely started due to her encounter 1st encounter with Emil, who she found starving in the street. She bought him bread, but her father refused to help Emil when she asked. Ada couldn’t understand why. I think from then she likely began to look down on her father’s actions. Her father was probably like the other doctors, someone who followed the latest “fads”, was primarily interested in profit, and utilized treatments that Ada wouldn’t always agree with, just like how she looks down on what the asylum is doing.

Ada says she used to utilize the same methods in the past, but “that was a long time ago”. This could also refer to potentially what she used to do in her desperation for her hypnotherapy experiments at college to work, before the plug was pulled. That would explain why she’d describe “tormenting patients for the sake of my research”.

Not giving up, Ada travels to various hospitals and clinics, looking for some place where she can carry out her experiments and hopefully find a patient who will give her success.

It’s during this period that Ada goes to White Sand Street Asylum for an “eleven-day medical training program here”.

While looking at the list of patients, specifically at those labeled dangerous, she notices “a person without a surname on the list, Emil”. She watched the doctors give him electroshock therapy, and how, unlike other patients, he “didn't seem as terrified”. “When his treatment was over, he even smiled at the doctors... A mindless, yet eerily natural smile...”. She’d never seen someone react like this: “He didn't try to avoid or resist the pain inflicted on him. Even though his consciousness was tenuous at best, he instinctively showed signs of joy”.

Eventually, she finds herself alone with Emil, who was “trembling and gasping violently”. Taking a chance, she found that “when I blew my whistle, he would become surprising calm”. Ada figures out his past based on the only possession Emil had been found with, a dog collar, and why he reacts the way he does to the whistle.

Emil is the first person Ada’s encountered who could “respond to hypnotism while under intense pain”, which was part of the reason her experiments had failed in the past. It is at this point she decides to mess with the medications the asylum was giving Emil, so Emil could be more “cognizant” even though it’d bring “greater pain”. The next day, Emil does suffer more from the electroshock therapy, but just like before, he calms down once he hears Ada’s whistle. Ada is ecstatic to finally find the “perfect candidate for my experiments”.

Ada gradually reduces his medication over the next few days. Once he was conscious enough, she tells him she’d taken away his pain medication. Ada is conflicted, and wonders if what she’s doing is alright, and seeks answers for herself based on whether Emil forgives her. When she asks him “Ada or medicine”, he responds with “Ada” despite Emil knowing this meant more pain, which relieves her worries and makes her feel “elated beyond words”.

Despite the fact Ada initially only saw Emil only in terms of him being a perfect candidate for her experiments, she gradually starts to “develop feelings for him”. She knows she is going to have to leave soon, but due to the fact she’d grown quite attached to him, she decides she wants him to leave with her.

Emil is grateful to Ada for her helping to wake him up. He says he’s stopped experiencing the nightmare about his past that’s plagued him “for as long as I can remember”. And so, when he receives a gift of a flower from her one day, not knowing what was a proper way to react in response to getting a gift, fashions a ring for her from his bed wire.

Ada is touched by his return gift, as this was the “first time a patient had shown me understanding and gratitude”. This only hardens her resolve to get him out of the asylum.

As they prepare to make their escape at dawn, Ada mentions the staff will be on high alert until then because a patient, a “young girl” managed to escape from the asylum. This is likely to be Lisa, who we know escapes from the asylum based on the fact she is using a fake name to hide her identity.

Eventually, the 2 do manage to escape from the asylum. Ada takes them to a “new home” that’s “faraway” with “no people around” and requires “getting there in a car”.

They live like this for 3 years, but unfortunately, Emil starts growing worse. “Emil has begun to have frequent headaches again, and his self-awareness is declining...I can't watch him lose himself and go back to the pathetic way he was before. I can't lose him again, my one and only love...”. His other symptoms include “Anxiety disorder, OCD, hallucinations, dementia, and recurring night terrors”.

One potential solution to her current issue comes in the form of Orpheus, who Ada 1st met while at the asylum. Orpheus is offering to try the “latest treatment” on Emil in exchange for Ada giving Orpheus the list of patient files of White Sand Street Asylum. Ada is skeptical at first, and initially directs him to her father’s clinic, who she says may be “the type of doctor who will get along with you”. This I think is a bit of sarcasm to imply she thinks him and her father are both the bad type of people/doctor that she doesn’t like. She did say she didn’t believe in his “method of finding inspiration from patients in the asylum”. However, after some amount of time and Emil’s condition only worsens, she decides to eventually agree to the deal and heads to the manor.

Besides potentially as “inspiration” for his novels, another reason Orpheus is likely interested in the patients of the asylum is because that is where Alice was sent. After the tragedy that killed Alice’s parents in 1887, Alice was sent to the asylum due to her supposedly having gone “insane”.

Orpheus wants to visit her, but is declined because Alice is currently “unstable” and they want to “minimize external stimulation” since he would remind her of “what happened in the past” which “wasn’t a great memory to her”. Instead, they tell him a “kind individual” took notice and “offered a significant amount of financial assistance to the orphanage and put together an excellent treatment package designed exclusively for Alice”.

Orpheus is less than enthused as he writes “LIAR!” at the bottom of the letter. But we also know Orpheus to an extent was right as Alice “experienced both mental and physical torture in the orphanage” (aka the asylum).

This “individual” was Villhelm Lamb, a “medical professor” that “secretly adopted” her for the purpose of using her as an “experimental subject”. It was for this reason that he took her to “Melbourne when she was 14 years old”.

Her backstory states “With prolonged medication and physical therapy, she gradually regained consciousness, however, it is perhaps more cruel to live soberly in hell than to live unaware in human world”. But as we can see from flashes of her past, this wasn’t a very happy time due to all the experiments she was subjected to.

We can see that some of the drugs used on Alice included Mnemosyne and Siren’s Song. Mnemosyne is the drug that makes a person forget, and considering what we heard in Orpheus’ letter from the asylum, it is likely they were trying to make her forget the tragedy (potentially as a way to stabilize her). Siren’s Song is the hallucinogenic. Maybe they were giving her this as another way to somehow help her regain her mental stability (unless this was a mistake, but I’m not sure).

We can also see one of the people shown working on Alice includes someone who looks strikingly like Orpheus, so it’s likely he somehow managed to get himself involved to see Alice again and may be wanting to do this to her as some way to help (though it is clear this isn’t entirely a good thing and Alice wants to get away).

In any case, Alice does eventually manage to escape back to England when she’s 21, where she becomes a “social journalist in anonymity, looking for the truth about the tragedy and the disappearance of her playmates”.

We can see from her deductions though that someone likely wants to eliminate Alice. Considering the similarities, I believe it’s possible whoever this is has hired the crime syndicate that was first mentioned during Luchino’s 1st letter to go after her, with their conclusion being she needs eliminated.

Alice’s deductions 8-10 appear to be written by a different author than the one who wrote 1-7, meaning it is likely no longer the crime syndicate talking, meaning whoever hired the syndicate has hired someone else to go after Alice. This new hired person seems to suspect that Orpheus and Alice are “much closer than expected” based on Alice’s deduction 8. Considering Norton’s 2nd letter, it is possible he is this new person hired to go after Alice. There’s also how this person says they initially believed Alice’s “recklessness and bravery were just a front”, which is very similar to how Norton calls the female he was to target as “arrogant”, before Alice’s deduction 9 continues by saying they realize this was a mistake, “it is neither a front nor bravery”. This is likely because Alice’s “sense of fear” is “significantly weaker than normal” after the experiments Villhelm put her through. The last deduction, where it asks what the subject thinks she saw vs what she actually saw, which can relate to how during Ashes of Memory Alice sees Mary and Fool’s Gold instead of Frederick and Norton.

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swanqueensalad · 1 year

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i’m not sure if you’ve already done something similar but i was wondering if you had any hc for regina’s relationship with clothes? i just feel like there’s so much to dig into with all her mother’s bullshit and how she was raised to value appearances, how performative a lot of her outfits were as the evil queen, the shift in how she dresses after the curse breaks, her and emma’s opposite approaches to how they dress themselves. idk i just feel like if anybody else would also have thoughts on this, it would be you

anon i am literally in love with you for sending me this ask. honestly why have i never done a post on this before!!! this is SO interesting to me!! clothing is definitely a hugely important part of regina's character and journey over the course of the show.

PSA: this turned into a literal play by play biography of regina's life through clothing. ur welcome. also this is totally unedited, we die like men

I think clothing means a lot of different things to Regina. I think she both revels in and resents the glitz and glamour, uses it as her shield, weaponry and armour but also it can be very vulnerable for her... it's a lot

and I agree that, unfortunately like many things with Regina, we have to start by tracking back to her childhood and how Cora raised her

Regina is a young noblewoman in the enchanted forest, and much of her 'value' to her family would lie in making an advantageous marriage. Layer on top of that Cora's absolute single minded determination for success, social climbing and for Regina to become queen one day and you just KNOW appearances were a huge deal when Regina was growing up (we see this threaded through canon too, in Cora magically changing Regina's clothes/hair/makeup for her)

to Cora, Regina's beauty was always a valuable tool she could use, but her brutal ambition would have led to absolute perfectionism.

After all, sweetheart, queens have to be perfect.

I think even when Regina was a very young child, a huge amount of weight was put onto her clothing and how she was presented.

I can imagine Cora choosing elaborate outfits for her infant daughter, dressing her up like a doll and making sure the ribbons in her hair matched exactly, being absolutely critical of everything to ensure her child was the best dressed, the most perfect

And I think this hugely impacted Regina's childhood. Cora would have allowed Regina very little freedom, partially because she was conditioning her to behave like a queen (or just like an obedient pawn for her to do whatever she wanted with) but also partially because Regina literally could not risk getting messy or dirty.

Image is everything, darling.

As child, Regina couldn't really play because she would ruin her dress, or her hair, or scuff her shoes. She had no choice but to occupy herself with the 'proper' pursuits that her mother approved of, because she physically couldn't do anything else. No running, tree climbing, flower picking etc for tiny Regina. Lots of sitting quietly and looking pretty, even as a child.

I can definitely see Cora showing Regina off from an early age, dressing her up like a doll, inviting other noblewomen for tea and dressing Regina better than any of their children, making her sit nicely and quietly.

If Regina were to be 'bad' and accidently dirty her dresses, mess up her hair etc. I think Cora would definitely punish her quite severely. because from day one, Cora was drilling into Regina that her appearance was one of the most valuable and worthwhile things about her. Queens have to be perfect.

And of course, little Regina doesn't want to be a queen, she just wants to go play in the meadow with the other children, but she wants to be a good girl more than anything, because mother hurts her when she's not.

As Regina grows older, I think Cora becomes far more critical of her appearance. A doll like, cute child is far easier to keep 'perfect' than an adolescent girl, and it's also all a huge control tactic for Cora to keep Regina affection starved and desperate to please her. So there would be backhanded comments, the constant pressure to be more beautiful. The feeling started to grow in Regina that she was pretty, just not pretty enough, never enough.

Ik I've talked about this before here (TW for EDs) but I headcanon Cora as absolutely fucking up a young Regina's body image and relationship with food too, controlling/restricting her diet. So I can imagine that dress fittings became a source of enormous stress and pain for an adolescent and teenage Regina.

In the enchanted forest, as a noble, all of Regina's clothes were likely hand made from expensive fabrics. Cora would spare no expense for making her daughter the most fashionable, beautiful, ideal young lady. So there was enormous pressure on Regina to 'wear the clothes well' and to keep them pristine. But these fittings would have been hell, because Cora definitely was stood in the corner, never ever asking Regina's opinions or how she feels in the clothes, but only ever criticizing the fit, asking if her corset could be laced tighter, and despairing over tiny mistakes.

Despite all this though, I do think a young Regina enjoyed clothing and fashion in a way. As much as her mother made it absolute hell, Regina really did like the few dresses she was allowed to have a say in and I think she always liked pretty things, she just wished she was allowed to like them on her own terms.

I think the white dress we see her wearing in a lot of her early EF flashbacks was one of her favourites because it's pretty but also simple and comfortable, something she would have chosen herself and just luckily happened to be considered suitable by her mother.

I've written about it in this fic but I also think Cora would have been actively sexualising Regina from a young age, trying to make her as appealing to suitors and other noblemen as possible to get more power and advantage. This would make Regina very uncomfortable, and I think at this point she really resented all this elaborate clothing and heavy jewelry.

There's also something really interesting in canon ouat costume design I want to discuss because I've never seen it discussed before: in 2x015 The Queen Is Dead, we get a glimpse of the fashions in Leopold's kingdom around the time Regina and Snow were about to meet for the first time. We see Queen Eva, clearly an empowered adult woman, wearing a tightly fitting deep red dress covered in jewels. Meanwhile the ten (ish?) year old Snow White wears a more appropriately girlish frock with puffy sleeves, a simple bodice and full skirts. Around this time, we mostly see Regina dressed in the latter style, implying she is still being dressed and presented more as a young lady/maiden than an adult. The blue dress Cora puts her in to meet King Leopold is a very similar design to Snow's, with full sleeves and skirt; her riding coats are also loose and puffy sleveed; the dress she wears at dinner when married to Leopold is full sleeved and skirted too; the white dress we see her in several times is the exception, but looser still than Eva's style.

I believe the earliest we see Regina in that adult style dress is in Fruit of the Poisonous Tree, when she's years into her marriage and about to kill her husband and seize power. This is a moment of empowerment for her shown through costume, and a clear shift she's gone from girl to woman, which is actually disgusting considering this is at the end of her marriage to the elderly king.

My point here is that I think throughout her marriage the world still saw Regina as a child to a degree, a poor replacement for Eva, and Regina was still very much a young woman, who did not feel any older or freer. Her marriage kept her trapped and unempowered, just like her mother had.

She always had to be beautiful and perfect, and this pressure was amped up even more as queen. I can see a newly married Regina trying so hard in the first few years to always be perfect, constructing elaborate outfits, hair and makeup just like Cora taught her, to try and be good enough for Leopold, to make him more kind to her, to make anyone at court notice her at all, but it never works. She is still only ever objectified or sidelined or both.

When she begins training with Rumple, we start to see Regina developing a new sense of style: she begins wearing darker colours, to mimic her mentor in a way. I think this is very indicative of her mental state, how easily influenced she was, how much she wanted to latch onto this one source of potential hope and power in her life.

But this was of course a transitional period, and I do think it's interesting that we see her in 1x11, seducing Sidney and killing her husband finally wearing one of the long, tight, elegant 'adult' dresses Eva wore as queen. This is when Regina really steps into her own power.

Once again to refer briefly to the same fic I think in the few years leading up to this (remember, as I love to remind everyone, her entire horrific marriage was probably around 8 years at least), Regina began to learn more of her seduction politics, and started to understand how she could manipulate the way men behaved towards her. She started to fully understand what her mother meant, how to choose a dress for the right situation, how to choose a neckline, a lipstick shade, a way of walking and talking.

I think this took her a while to stop feeling disgusted by. At some point, the rush of even this tiny way of grabbing power was exhilarating, long overdue. At some point, that stopped making her skin crawl.

Starting to wear darker colours was I think a way of rebelling against her past self. I really think throughout her reign as the 'evil queen', Regina had to loathe her younger, innocent self because that was the version of her that got hurt, used, raped, manipulated, brokenhearted. It was easier to hate that version of herself, to blame herself for being weak and stupid (Mother's voice in her head, always) than to fully feel the pain she was still in. So the pastels and whites of her youth were completely gone. She buried them, and the girl who loved them, as far as she could.

It also seems like pastels were commonplace in the Enchanted Forest based on every extra in every ballroom scene ever, and at this point Regina was so reliant on her attractiveness as a form of power that wearing dark colours and deep jewel tones was a way to ensure she always stood out, always caught the eye.

As her reign grew, I think the Evil Queen costumes grew more and more extravagant as a show of wealth and power to dazzle the commoners and intimidate all the nobles. Regina was showing them with her style choices that she was in a league of her own. And the more she leaned into it, the glitz and glamour, all the diamonds and makeup, the things she hated as a young girl, the safer she feels. The more hidden. The more superhuman.

The Evil Queen was a physical symbol as well as an idea of who Regina was. I think of it almost like how celebrities have public persona, sexualised and stylised, instantly recognisable and fastidiously designed. I think this made Regina, a physically small woman, much smaller than all the other older, male leaders and rulers, feel protected, confident and powerful.

(I think it's also a defense against the fact that as a very young girl Regina was sexualised by her own mother for a much older man, for his whole court I suppose. Regina has always been taught, through her mother's words and actions, that her beauty and attractiveness correlate to her worth, power and usefulness. And now she sort of enacts that on herself to keep herself safe. Because they can't sexualise her if she's sexualised herself first, they can't be using her if she's letting them and using their lust for her to her own ends. Her beauty keeps her safe. Queens have to be perfect, Regina.)

When we get to Storybrooke, I think it translates somewhat. In this world, political figures are the power symbols, and unfortunately in this world too, female politicians are more successful if they are polished and beautiful. Or so Regina would see it.

Queens have to be perfect, sweetheart.

She upkeeps the Evil Queen thing where she has a recognisable image, this polished perfect professional thing. Though this world is on a much smaller scale, Regina's mindset is not at all. She would never be seen out of the house without a perfect face of makeup, without perfectly done hair, manicured nails, the right outfit, the right shoes. Because queens have to be perfect. You can't show them a single crack in your armour.

It isn't all a chore though. I think Regina really does enjoy her own style, especially in Storybrooke as it is so different to anything Cora or Leopold would have had her wearing, and because it's part of a world she made for herself, there's more of a sense of independence and ownership of her own style. I think she has a really nice sense of routine in doing her makeup and hair, which is good for her too.

But still in Storybrooke, we see Regina using her attractiveness, using seduction as a often reached for tool in her arsenal.

And on the other hand we have Emma.

Now, this is a Regina post but the ask did specify and I do find it interesting and want to discuss, so I'll give a much briefer overview of my headcanons about Emma and her style.

Off the bat I'll say I consider 'Emma's style' as season 1 and 2 Emma. (I'm not going to analyse the straight-girl-style-ification of Emma Swan in the later seasons bc that's another story and also just Bad storytelling imo)

Skinny jeans, boots, tanks, plaid, leather jackets, beanies, baseball shirts. She's mostly casual, can be a bit edgy, a bit lesbian swagger, a bit teenage boy (at times). Sometimes she does a winged liner, sometimes nothing. And she dresses with nothing else in mind but what makes her feel confident and cool and herself.

Because Emma as a kid never really had the freedom to pick her own clothes. The homes got a lot of donations, and sometimes there were cool things she could grab a hold of if she managed to beat the older kids to it, but a lot of the time she was just in whatever hand me downs she could get. Not ideal for a young queer girl trying to work out her identity.

So when she started to establish a life for herself, the first time she buys her red leather jacket etc, these moments are really meaningful to Emma because it's more about being able to own her sense of self and stand on her own two feet in a stable way rather than just being about the clothes.

Which is so beautiful, because it just goes to show that once again Regina and Emma are complimentary opposites. Clothes were never important in Emma's life, so when she gets the chance, she just likes being able to wear whatever the fuck she wants, to never really worry about it, and to feel good. To Regina, clothes were always enormously important and so a great deal of thought and preparation goes into everything she wears.

I think it is interesting the way they interact in this case, because they are so different, and they both find the other one so hot, and I think they also both admire how different it is for the other.

Regina in denial would definitely consider Emma's casualness to be improper and lazy, but deep down, and eventually openly once they grow closer, she knows she admires her freedom and fearlessness.

Meanwhile Emma thinks Regina is the hottest woman on the planet (she's right) and appreciates how perfectly her gf puts outfits together, how good her makeup and skincare collection is.

But Emma can also see the other side of it for Regina too, is one of the few people (perhaps because of her own history with clothes) who can see the strain there. The control and obsession with her own appearance, the perfectionism.

And I think Emma is really good for her in that sense. Emma's own freedom and confidence is a good influence. Because gradually, as they get together and their relationship develops, Regina is able to let down a little more of that mask, bit by bit.

Letting Emma see her with wet hair, her natural curls straight out of the shower. Or in her robe with no makeup on in the mornings. And as they build their life together, Regina finds this immense relief in having someone who sees all of her in every state.

It's not as scary as it once seemed.

And Emma thinks Regina is just as beautiful in leggings and fresh faced as she is with makeup and an expensive dress. (Once again, she is right). This is groundbreaking to Regina, this idea that she can be loved and valued without upkeeping her definition of 'perfection'. That she could be enough as she is, for Emma.

That she is enough, as she is.

And of course, she doesn't always believe that. How can she, after the life she has lived? But she's working on it, and when these feelings of immense vulnerability and insecurity in herself arise, she is able to voice them to Emma (sometimes with a bit of struggle) and Emma holds space for her, listens without judgement, calls Cora a dumb bitch (sometimes) and assures Regina that she is the most beautiful person Emma's ever seen, but that her beauty is not why she fell in love with her, and it's not what makes her worthy.

And slowly, I think Regina starts to get back to finding more joy in fashion. More appreciation, in the way her younger self always wanted.

#i fucking love analysing costumes in media #and i fucking love historical/fantasy fashion #AND i fucking love analysing regina mills #this is the best post ever #christmas came early for miss salad #regina mills meta #regina mills analysis #ouat analysis #regina mills headcanons #regina mills #swan queen #sq #swan mills family #swan queen headcanons #emma swan #fuck king leopold #tw cora #tw leopold #cora mills

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total-drama-shark · 1 year

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First impressions on every contestant!

Warning this gets long.

Millie

Was really interested on the possibility of a nerdy character from her introduction, but I feel like my biggest gripe with her is the whole “my generation” thing, it just feels slightly mean spirited and not realistic for a personality trait. Teens generally don’t like being told that their generation sucks or that they’re all dumb or have their use of technology criticized. The ones that do dislike their generation are those either trying to receive approval from older people or “I was born in the wrong generation” type kids. She’s just, unrelatable.

Axel

Her voice is higher than I expected, I like the survival theme and was surprised we got another zombie conspiracy nut in the cast (so happy we got a Shawn cameo/reference as well!) she really is like a mix of Jo and Eva with a sprinkle of Shawn and I wish we got to see more of her!

Priya

Super interesting to see a contestant raised by TD fans, and her intro was amazing! Baby and toddler Priya! Owen reference! She is 100% going to be an interesting character. I guess there’s also a subversion of a big Desi stereotype with her, she wants to go to med school but her parents want her to enter a more unconventional and unstable field, I don’t know exactly how to feel about this, specially since I’m not desi myself.

Zee

My man!!! I love me a skater/surfer dude and the Jude vibes are impeccable!! He is so chill and just here to vibe. I’ve audibly laughed at multiple of his lines and just love him so much. I also think he’s neat amputee rep, he’s casual about it and was just born that way, but can make fun stories up about it.

Ripper

Am I disappointed by the fart and potty jokes? Yes, but besides that I actually really like his character! An annoying bully who despite his best efforts is a loser. Also if his voice doesn’t fuel the nowen child headcanons out there I don’t know what will.

Damien

A total newbie! Very opposite to Priya in this case and also super interesting character trait for him, I hope both him and Priya can function a bit to show off the POV of both old and new fans alike. He’s also very entertaining :)

Scary girl

Exactly what I expected from her and more! She is very much one dimensional compared to most the rest but I love her! I love wildcards! So excited to see her shenanigans

Bowie

Introducing yourself as the first openly gay contestant is definitely a first impression! I’ve got to say I adore his competitive and scheming nature and you can tell he’s in it to win it, he also has amazing social skills and is overall an icon. I know not everyone will be into the idea of the first openly queer contestant being very stereotypical but I’ve always thought that just as while his sexuality isn’t the center of his personality and there’s at least another queer character that isn’t as stereotypical it’s all good, and by the looks of it that will be the case. Also I know multiple gay dudes that act just as him so I have a bias.

Chase

Did not expect a stunt Youtuber type guy but I definitely should’ve seen it coming, also DRAMA?? Pre established EXES??? I am so interested in seeing how this pans out

Emma

I love her voice first of all and I did not expect her to have been part of the stunt Youtuber group, hope the ex drama isn’t all there is to her character and I really enjoy her friendship with Bowie so far!

Oh I love her, we haven’t seen a character like her before and she has so much potential! A character that knows she’s underestimated and takes advantage of that? Yes please!

Caleb

Pretty much a Justin copy, I can’t really say much about him and we knew how things were going to pan out so I can only hope he’ll make if farther and get more development next season.

Wayne & Raj

Hockey dudes! They’re such jocks and can sense the “makes fun of me lightly for being unathletic but cheers for me when I finally start participating in sports” energy from them so hard, they’re fun guys and feel so much like real teen boys.

Nichelle

An actual TV star! I didn’t see that coming but I love it! Love seeing the little flashbacks to her shows and movies and seeing someone in the show be treated as an actual celebrity, she’s also as far as I’ve seen pretty smart, level headed, and humble for a TV celebrity! So interested in seeing her work!

Julia

The influencer chick! Her intro was amazing and I definitely didn’t expect her to be into healing crystals, feel like she’ll be a very interesting character and I await her interactions with Nichelle.

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unhingedhearties · 1 month

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The Burned Photo Evidence!

Someone anonymously sent me screencaps of a Twitter exchange that mentioned the infamous burning of Erin's photo incident. The original post was deleted, but on a hunch I put the URL into the Wayback Machine and by luck the deleted Tweet was archived, although the video of the photo being burned was not saved. That's what I really wanted, however this is close enough and I'm feeling generous, so pinned this post will be for 2 months.

It’s like reading a Tweet or message on Instagram today. It really is the same insane behavior. It’s just coming from “the other side”.

This Team Lucas Team Nathan nonsense needs to be put in a highschool textbook as an example of horseshoe theory. Forget analyzing how Democrats and Republicans act, that is the prime example.

“Nathan carried those last three seasons”

So you’re weird hatred of Elizabeth aside, NONE of the other characters were fun to watch? Nobody? I could understand this mentality if you were watching a show with a small cast and you only care for one character, but how do you sit and watch an hour long show with a large ensemble of characters and only care about one person who gets, what, ten minutes of screen time an episode?

Of course they tagged the actors, writers and producers. Because when you’re showing your ass in public, you want the largest audience possible.

“If they hadn't humiliated our Mountie like they did we might even think about rooting for her.”

It astounds me how many people, on both sides, don’t treat Elizabeth like a person. She is just a physical embodiment of validation. They don’t actually care about the character or her journey. A lot of the time it feels like they hate her. But they want her to approve of the man they’ve chosen to obsess over. “Yes, pick the same man I also picked. Now shut up and let me project myself onto you.”

I feel like this needs to be said:

Chris is not going to **** you

Kevin is not going to **** you.

The sooner some of you people come to terms with that, the healthier your lives will be.

God Bless Emma and TeamHeartieElizabeth for trying to bring some sanity into this situation.

“If you didn’t like it, just don’t see it!”

That is some brilliant logic. 10/10 big brain thinking.

“If was a joke”

You have a shit sense of humor. I doubt if someone did that with your photos you’d be laughing. You’d be throwing down the victim card so fast your wrist would break.

“I don’t care about being criticized!” *post deleted*

The Internet is public. Anything you do on it is public and open for ridicule. That is the thesis statement of this Tumblr.

#when calls the heart #wcth #hallmark #fandom drama #hearties #team lucas #team nathan #unhinged fans

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grandtheftaristotle · 1 month

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Hey so I was inspired by @likeadevils's brilliant album reworkings to do one of my own cause I LOVE finding new ways to procrastinate on homework

I decided to do Speak Now cause it's one of my favourite Taylor albums and while I think the current order is great, it was a fun challenge to try and come up with something else. So here's what I have!

So first of all, I think I’m gonna call this rework The Story of Us. Not only is Speak Now the song not on this version, but The Story of Us fits these vibes better Each song is its own contained story that forms an overall narrative, kinda like folklore.

Timeless: It feels so much like a closing track that it gives off a nice ‘end at the beginning’ vibe. Also parallels nicely with the closing track.

Sparks Fly: I like the idea of the earliest written song on the record being track 2. Although she rewrote it to be less naive, I do like how Foolish One could be its answer. Also it leads into…

The Story of Us: ‘How we met and the sparks flew instantly’. Too obvious? Nahhhh. I like that it foreshadows the heartbreak of the later album but frames it in an upbeat way so as not to let us down too much. Plus the awkward party element leads us nicely into the next track.

Enchanted: Is it the same party? A later party? Not sure, but it continues the vibes of the last song, while also offering one last little piece of fairytale whimsy and romance before the latter half rips our hearts out.

Mean: As you can see, I am not adhering to the track 5 rule lol. But this is a set up for Castles Crumbling and Innocent, with the talk of fame and the different ways of responding to criticism.

When Emma Falls In Love: This song kinda makes me insane when I think about the context in which Taylor wrote it. She was dealing with everything surrounding JM when she wrote the line ‘she won’t lose herself in love the way that I did’. The last line (‘between me and you, sometimes I wish I was her’) is a GREAT set up for the next half of the album; it establishes everything Taylor didn’t do in these relationships and the person she wishes she had been. Part of me wants to do another rearrangement with this as the opening track, cause again, that last line.

Back to December: We have an excellent lead in with Emma; ‘I wish I was her’ and then a song about how badly she screwed up a relationship. Plus, the rest of the album is like an explanation of why she screwed it up. We’re slowly zooming in…

Last Kiss: Almost a flipped perspective of Back to December? I’m a little shaky on this placement, I almost feel like this song and the next could switch places, but idk how I feel about Last Kiss and Dear John back to back. Therefore, the next song is…

Ours: Getting into another relationship after heartbreak, one that others don’t approve of but that makes her happy. It’s a love song, but an understated one, not as bombastic as Sparks Fly or as sweepingly romantic as Enchanted. Cute, but careful.

Dear John: THE AFTERMATH. Christ. The parallel of Emma and the result of Ours and the events that led to Back to December. The fireworks line is a slight parallel to Sparks Fly and The Story of Us as well. It’s a moment of triumph amidst the heartbreak. ‘I lost you, but I’m still shining for the crowd. Oh wait…’

Castles Crumbling: AND NOW SHE’S LOSING THE CROWD. The formal demolition of her fairytale outlook and the parallel to Mean. She’s living in the big old city, but the big old city’s getting tired of her. It also looks ahead to the last track, where she hopes to be remembered regardless.

Haunted: I just like that we have Enchanted on the first half and Haunted on the flip side. She’s no longer enchanted by a stranger, she’s haunted by someone she thought she knew well. I also like how the word haunted works with Castles lol.

Innocent: Even on the OG record, I feel like this should’ve gone after Haunted if just for the ‘you and I walk a fragile line’ ‘lost your balance on a tightrope’ of it all. On some level I get why she didn’t cause it would’ve been this song and then Last Kiss, which, ouch. But anyway, I know this is about Kanye but FUCK that guy so now within the narrative it’s her talking to herself (just ignore the 32 part). Even after everything she’s been through she’s still an innocent, and it’s not too late to regain her balance.

Foolish One: Again, kinda shaky on this placement, I feel like it should be earlier in the second half. But as is, it’s a parallel to Sparks Fly where she’s cautiously optimistic about a guy; that song was sung by the voice in her head she talks about here. It’s also a follow up to Innocent; you may be innocent, but it doesn’t mean you have to be foolish. PLUS it’s a little bit of a hope spot after all the heartbreak (‘the day is gonna come for your confessions of love / he just wasn’t the one’). As an aside, I am fully convinced she added that line for the rerecord. She sings the rest of the song in a higher register matching her voice in 2010, but for that line she lowers her voice closer to her current register, making it seem like it’s her future self talking. Plus she recorded that when she was still with Joe; something something ‘this ain’t our fairytale’.

Long Live: Our moment of triumph!! After Castles Crumbling, this is where she says ‘hey, even if people run me off, we’ll still be remembered’. Parallels our opener both in title (Timeless / Long Live) and in subject matter; she and the guy weren’t timeless, but the legacy of her and her band will live forever.

BONUS TRACKS

Better Than Revenge: Really my only justification for this is that I couldn’t fit it on the main album but if she hadn’t released it in 2010 we NEVER would’ve gotten it. Plus it being a bonus track gives off the vibe of ‘oh you thought you were off the hook??? You thought I wasn’t gonna write about you??? Lmao fuck you’.

If This Was A Movie: Similar justification for this as with Better Than Revenge; since she kinda rebranded it as a Fearless song with the rerecord, if she didn’t put it out in 2010 we may not have gotten it at all (she wrote it in 2009 so I don’t think it could’ve been a Fearless vault track either). That said, it fits the ‘story’ themes of the album so I think it works. Plus I like how it interacts with BTR; from pure unfiltered rage to ‘BUT I’D TAKE IT ALL BACK NOW’.

Mine: It KILLED me to leave this off the main album, it really did. Maybe one of my all time favourite songs of hers. Part of me wants to switch this and Timeless, but I also like the idea of having Mine as the last track just because of how it rounds out the album. The narrator is very disillusioned with love at the beginning, so it could easily be taking place after this string of heartbreak she experienced throughout the record. I also love how it ends with ‘hold on, make it last’; after being burned so many times, she finally starts to believe in love again and the notion that they could be forever. The way it interacts with Timeless, which was a portrait of very idyllic fairytale romances that last forever (love letters during a war, forbidden lovers eloping, two people growing old together), this song focuses on the more mundane parts of life that still make up a beautiful relationship. Also if we’re thinking about this as part of her album timeline, the next album she puts out is Red, so we go from ‘there’s a drawer of my things at your place’ to ‘you’ve still got [my scarf] in your drawer even now’. OW.

And as vault tracks we have Speak Now, Superman, I Can See You, Never Grow Up, Electric Touch, and Battle. Because I’m still a little offended we never got an official version of that song :/

#taylor swift #speak now #ttpd prep #maybe?? doing this helped me to find interesting parallels between the songs so I think it counts

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motownfiction · 3 months

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will, daniel: 🧅🍋🍅

elenore, lucy: 🥑🥕🍎

for ✨will✨

🍅 [TOMATO] wow misunderstood is your OC? in-universe or IRL.

i think will is incredibly misunderstood in-universe. people think he's dumb, that he doesn't have anything going for him, that his interests are an elaborate trick to get the girl he likes to like him back. but that's not true. will is incredibly genuine. he is so honest, he scares everyone, including himself.

in real life, it's hard to know. this blog has a fair amount of followers, but only a few who ever say anything. and those people are already my friends who understand him completely.

🧅 [ONION] what is surefire to make your OC cry? who knows of this information?

will is pretty easy to make cry, but i think the easiest way is for him to see his wife or daughters struggling. everyone knows that information, but lucy, elenore, and emma understand it the most.

🍋 [LEMON] what is their kryptonite/ultimate weakness?

family. don't threaten his family, whether that's his married family, parents/sisters, or best friends. for that matter, don't threaten anyone else's family.

for ✨daniel✨

🍅 [TOMATO] wow misunderstood is your OC? in-universe or IRL.

like will, daniel is very misunderstood in-universe. people want him to be easy, boring, someone you use. someone who doesn't think much, just acts. but that's so wrong. daniel is terribly introspective, to the point where he's frustrating.

in real life, i'd wager daniel is pretty misunderstood by the readers. i have no real way of knowing that, but his vignettes usually get extremely popular because he has daddy issues. i can imagine people think that's all there is. and admittedly, that's a lot of it. but that's not all, and i have this feeling that it's what daniel would be reduced to if this blog was bigger/mainstream media.

🧅 [ONION] what is surefire to make your OC cry? who knows of this information?

i feel bad saying this because of the rant above, but daniel will cry at memories of his father, at certain sinatra songs, at certain foods. anything that reminds him of when his parents fought. everyone knows that, but two people know the most about the intricacies. one of them is sadie, but she still doesn't get it in the same way as lola.

for ✨elenore✨

🍎 [RED APPLE] who does your OC value above all else?

veronica. no question about it. elenore's with charlie now, but don't think for a second that happened without veronica's enthusiastic and express approval. she values her parents, her sister, and charlie, too. but veronica will always come before any of them.

🥕 [CARROT] how tough is your OC against certain situations? how weak are they against others?

this question is so much more vague than it thinks it is 😭 regardless, i think elenore is really tough when people question her intelligence. it happens a lot. she is very bubbly in a way her mother isn't, and people mistake this for stupidity a lot of the time. it happens so often that it hardly even bothers her anymore. i think she gets weak when people confront her actual shortcomings, though. she's not good with earnest criticism.

🥑 [AVOCADO] what will they never back down about, even if it makes them seem bad?

charlie. her relationship with him, both past and present. she defends herself, she defends him, she defends their daughter, and she's not wrong to do it.

for ✨lucy✨

🍎 [RED APPLE] who does your OC value above all else?

will, elenore, emma, and veronica. that's the family she chose and made, and that's the family she'll stick with until she's gone. of course, she also values sadie, daniel, and their kids, but her own family will always take the cake. as it should be.

🥕 [CARROT] how tough is your OC against certain situations? how weak are they against others?

lucy is very good at enduring physical pain. even when it really hurts, she soldiers on. she tends to panic when she thinks she's going to get in trouble with her administration. even as a full professor, lucy always worries she'll be ousted for one reason or another. she's not afraid of authority because she breaks and bends rules all the time. she's afraid of getting caught, even now, after years of working.

🥑 [AVOCADO] what will they never back down about, even if it makes them seem bad?

similar to elenore, lucy will never back down about the fact that getting married at sixteen after finding out she was pregnant with elenore (and giving birth to elenore shortly after turning seventeen) was the right thing to do for her. she wouldn't recommend getting pregnant as a teenager, of course! but when it happened to her, she knew what was right for her. no one else got to make that decision, just like she wouldn't get to make that decision for anyone else.

by the way, this is why this version of lucy is comparatively so relaxed about this version of elenore coming home pregnant at age twenty-one. the earliest version of elenore got pregnant at age twenty-seven with a law degree and a job under her belt, and lucy panicked, despite elenore being a fully fledged adult. this lucy knows what it's like to be young, unexpectedly pregnant, and come to the conclusion that you want to have a baby now, after all. she's sympathetic because she's been there, and she's dealt with the scorn of teen pregnancy differently than other versions of lucy did.

#text #ask games #ch: will o'connor #ch: daniel deluca #ch: elenore o'connor #ch: lucy callaghan #buddyaldridge #thank you!

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biracialdisaster · 2 years

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Wedding Night

Part 11 of the Jailbait au. Find all the chapters here

Thank you to everyone who reads this but especially @a-reader-and-a-writer who has let me scream and vent and chat about it when she doesn't even go here!

Words: 2,200 ~ Pairing: Arvin Russell x prison nurse!reader ~ content: non explicit smut, angst, fluff

In the end, the dress you choose is very simple. A very, very pale grey, the colour of the sky on a winter day when there’s rain in the air.

Your sister comes around. Not entirely, but she helps you choose a pretty lingerie set to wear under the dress. It’s silky soft and wraps you up like the finest gift. Thinking about Arvin’s hands on you, taking it off, makes your blood run hot.

“You look so pretty,” she says as you turn slowly in the dress shop.

“Thankyou.”

“He’s nice,” she says, casting a critical eye on the hem, ensuring it looks perfect. “I didn’t expect that. I thought… well, you know.”

You take her hand. “I know. It surprised me, too. I’ve never met anyone like him.”

“He loves you. It’s written all over his face, every time he looks at you,” your sister says, a little wistfully. “I understand now why you could hardly entertain Timothy.”

You pay for the dress.

Emma, Arvin’s grandmother, chose not to come once your sister offered, saying she wanted to be surprised. You hope she approves; she means a lot to Arvin and that means her opinion matters to you, as well.

“Do you think you’ll get….. You know,” your sister whispers as she gets into the passenger side of your car. “A wedding night?”

“I sure hope so.”

“Other prisoners get married, don’t they?” she presses. “Anyway, I hope you get one.”

Before you start the car, you squeeze her hand. “Thank you for coming.”

She smiles. “We have to be there for each other, don’t we? I’m not sure Hank’ll come, but I’ll try and talk him around.”

You don’t really care if your brother in law does or doesn’t come, but you don’t say that.

You stop at a red light and worry Arvin’s ring with your thumb. You hope everything goes well, for him. You can leave and go home after whatever happens. He can’t.

Will he ever?

You put the maudlin thoughts away and instead focus on the wedding.

******

The day you’re due to be married dawns bright and clear. Arvin wrote to you a few days ago.

Dear darlin’

I can hardly wait to see you.

It’s gonna be the happiest day of my life. I know it.

Yours,

Arvin

You read the letter through several times, although it’s short.

Your sister helps you dress after admiring the underwear.

“He’s gonna swallow his tongue.”

You frown. “If he gets to see it.”

“He will.” She fusses with your hair after the dress is on, slides in a pretty pear hairclip and some flowers from her yard, baby’s breath and tiny white roses. She applies your make-up with a careful hand. “He ever seen you dressed up before?”

“He’s only ever seen me in my uniform, actually.”

Your sister laughs. “Yeah, boy’s gonna lose his mind. Can’t wait to hear all about it.” She spreads a little bit of blusher on your cheeks, and rouges your lips, just enough to add some rosy colour. “You look perfect, sis.”

You hug her tightly. You didn’t ever picture yourself getting married without her.

You also didn’t picture getting married in a jailhouse, but….

Life surprises us, sometimes. It’s what your mother used to say. And you’ll never be sorry that Arvin was your surprise.

Your sister drives you to the prison. Her husband’s coming in his own car, so you two will have this time together.

She walks you up to the meeting room that the wedding will be held in. Hardly your dream venue, but better than a plain cell. Governor Paulson has a soft spot, it seems, and you’re grateful.

Emma and Earskell are waiting outside. Emma looks lovely in a dress of pale rose, flowers of the same colour in her hair.

You greet her with a kiss on the cheek. She beams.

“I never thought I would be happy again. Thank you for giving me this,” she says softly.

Earskell just smiles and inclines his head.

“Arvin’s inside,” Emma says, and then one of the wardens opens the door.

The room has been decorated. Fresh flowers adorn a little table at the front, and even the sad, plain plastic prison chairs have been draped with garlands of eucalyptus, giving the space a fresh, hopeful smell.

Then you look up and Arvin’s gaze is riveted on you.

His eyes are wet and he looks gorgeous.

You didn’t tell him your dress was grey, but by some miracle or divine providence, his suit is grey, too, slate grey, and the cut of it accentuates his leanly muscled frame. His hair has been neatly combed, but that one unruly lock still bisects his left eyebrow. He’s freshly shaven, his shoes are new. He isn’t wearing a tie, but the edges of his crisp white shirt flirt with the lapels of his suit jacket in a deeply attractive way.

You hope you can get him alone.

“Hi,” he mouths to you from across the room.

“Hi,” you mouth back.

Your sister loops her arm through yours and you walk towards your future husband. Your gaze tracks briefly across the room and you see your brother in law, a few close friends, some colleagues who smile at you. But for the most part, your eyes are only for Arvin.

Your sister walks you all the way to him, leans in to whisper, “love you,”and you squeeze her hand before letting her go.

Governor Paulson stands guard as Arvin holds out his hands, and you take them. His eyes go wide for a second, like he can’t believe this is happening.

Out of the corner of your gaze, you see Emma, Earskell and your sister take their seats.

“You look like Heaven,” Arvin murmurs. His voice breaks a little on the last word.

“So do you.”

“Naw.” His eyes rove over your face and then take in your dress. “Prettiest girl I ever did see, and she’s mine. I had to pinch myself this mornin’.”

You open your mouth to reply, but Paulson clears his throat, and smiles at you briefly, before beginning, “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today….”

The ceremony goes by in a happy blur. You hold Arvin’s gaze for most of it, every iota of your being focused on the feel of his hands on yours, the sound of your full name in his voice as he pledges himself to you.

When Paulson pronounces you married, you lean in and kiss your husband, framing his face in your hands. When Arvin draws back to look at you, his eyes are wet, the strip lighting above you both picking out the flecks of gold in his brown irises.

“I love you,” he murmurs.

Everything inside you goes oh, so still. It’s the first time he’s said it.

“I love you, too,” you whisper, and for a moment, everything else falls away, and it doesn’t matter that this is a prison, or that your husband normally has to wear cuffs. He loves you, and you love him, and your heart feels like it’s flying.

“Pictures!” Your sister cries from her seat, and then the little cameras are flashing as you and Arvin pose. He bends to press a kiss to your forehead as your sister snaps a picture, and you hope you can get some of them to frame.

If you feel sad that you won’t share a home with your husband, you push it down. Today is a day for joy.

Emma has organised a little wedding breakfast in the same room, and the small group of you feast on corned beef sandwiches and pretty little cupcakes. You’re so on top of the world that it tastes like food fit for a King and Queen.

And then Governor Paulson tells you, in a quiet moment, that he’s arranged for you and Arvin to be alone in one of the prison’s top floor rooms reserved for visiting officials.

****

Someone’s been in, because a single rose lies on the bed. The gesture touches you, even if Arvin is led up here behind you in cuffs.

Paulson unlocks them himself, nods to you both. “The warden will be two doors away. Mr Russell goes back to his cell at seven a.m.”

Seven a.m is twelve hours away. Twelve hours alone with your husband. It feels like not enough, but it’s more than you could hope for.

The door shuts, and locks.

Arvin crosses over to you, and envelops you in his arms. When you look up at him, he grins, and this happiness sketched on his face, it’s devastating.

“Hi there, Mrs Russell.”

You grin back. “Hi, there, Mr Russell.”

His eyes dance with joy, and he kisses you. You kiss him back, and for the longest time, you just kiss, kiss and enjoy being together after a long break. And then kissing isn’t enough, and you lead Arvin over to the bed and turn him so that when you push his shoulders, he sits on the edge of the mattress.

“You’re so beautiful,” he murmurs as you slide his suit jacket off. It puddles on the bed with a whisper of fabric. “This dress… wow.”

“You look pretty wow yourself.” You kneel at his feet and his eyes widen for a second, and then you unzip his suit pants and his gaze goes hot and dark at the implication of what you’re about to do.

“Yes?” you ask.

“Holy shit, yes.” His voice has gone rough and ragged, like he’s on the edge of control and my God, it’s sexy.

You slide your hands up his thighs and notice that he’s fisting his fingers in the comforter on the bed. His erection tents the suit pants and you reach inside, draw it out through the slit in his serviceable underwear. You lick him softly, slowly, like a much longed for ice cream cone. His eyes drift closed; a muscle in his jaw ticks.

“Oh, wait!” You say, suddenly remembering your underwear.

He gives you a pained look.

“I promise it’ll be worth it.” And you reach behind you and unzip the back of your dress. The soft material falls around your feet, a circle of pale grey magic, and you’re naked save the beautiful underwear.

Arvin doesn’t say anything, but the heat snapping in his eyes could start fires all over the county. He draws a deep breath and his hands clench and unclench.

“C’mere,” he eventually says, his voice an octave lower, and you start to kneel again, but he stays you. “Up here.”

You climb on to his lap and straddle him, lean in for a kiss. He groans into your mouth.

“Tryin’ to kill me?” he asks softly.

“Trying to make it memorable.”

He swallows. “Any more memorable and I’ll be comin’ in my pants like a greenhorn.”

“I wouldn’t mind.”

“I would. This is our weddin’ night.” He holds you tightly, presses his face into the curve where your neck and shoulder meet. “I’m gonna make it good for you. Perfect, even.” He takes a deep, shuddering breath. “Can’t even figure where to start.” He draws a reverent finger over the curve of one bra cup. “Feels like it’s made of pure fantasy. You got this, special for me?”

You laugh. “Of course.”

He gives you the look of a humbled man. “Don’t deserve you. But I’m gonna spend the rest of my days makin’ sure you never regret this.”

He spends hours touching and kissing you reverently, stroking first over the silky garments and then removing them. He’s light-hearted, playful, as you make love to each other. You treat him just as gently, like treasure, finding your favourite parts of him under the suit. When you finally straddle him and take him inside you, his hands map the curves of your hips. Having him inside you feels like coming home. You try to commit everything to memory. The line of his neck as he throws his head back in bliss. The hard length of him hitting that sweet spot. The scratch of his voice as he hoarsely whispers your name, lost in pleasure. The taste of his skin.

He’s as good as his word, making you come with his fingers, his mouth and finally his cock, again and again, until you’re boneless with pleasure, beyond sated.

For your part, you bring him to the edge of orgasm time and again, working him over with your hands and lips and tongue, until he’s shaking with need, his breath coming in pants, begging to be inside you, whatever way you allow.

When you both fall into sleep, wrapped around each other, it’s so late that night has almost folded over into morning. You’re snuggled as close to Arvin as you can manage, your face tucked into his chest, the comforter keeping you in your own little cocoon of bliss.

You’ve barely been asleep for an hour before all hell breaks loose.

-----

@a-reader-and-a-writer @loverhymeswith @supremethunda @full-time-make-believer @the-not-so-silent-back-up @inmp89 @minejungwoo @cocoablossom

#arvin russell imagine #arvin russell fanfiction #tom holland imagine #the devil all the time

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florasletter · 4 months

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Christopher Nolan speech at the Critics Choice Awards 2024

Thank you so much, this is a tremendous honour. I wanna thank the critics circle, all the critics who helped with convincing mainstream audience that a film about quantum physics and apocalypse, could be worth their time. I am very grateful, very grateful to my incredible crew, many of them are here tonight, thank you. An unbeliavable cast led by the incomparable Cillian Murphy, thank you. I wanna thank Universal, I wanna thank Chuck Roven for putting the book American Prometheus in front of me. I wanna thank Emma Thomas for being not just the love of my life but very conviniently also the greatest producer working today so thank you. To mangle a quote from Sir Isaac Newton, "If I appear tall it's because I stand on the shoulders of giants" the particular giants I am standing on are Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin who wrote an incredible book - American Prometheus, it's been 25 years doing it, I thank you Kai for trusting me with your work and Martin, unfortunatelly left us before I was able to show him the final script, but Kai you constant reassurance once you saw the film with your word of approval, meant the world to me, so If I as a Pullitzer Prize winning historian you are watching The CW, thank you Kai, thank you for trusting me with your incredible work and thank you everybody.

#christopher nolan #oppenheimer #cillian murphy #critics choice awards

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morosexualharrow · 2 months

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youtube

wrapping up my look back at the dissolution of Pemberly Digital by being deeply surprised by how much I enjoyed this little seven episode teaser for a show that never got to get finished! this is my shortest video so far but I really wanted to just give a little tease in case anyone else wants to experience it for the first time all these years later, so nothing as in depth as my Lizzie Bennet analysis

#video essay #emma approved #emma approved revival #emma approved criticism #Youtube

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teach463146 · 1 year

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The House

“The House” is about a curious building’s hold over members of three species across three eras. Each act is helmed by different filmmakers—Emma de Swaef, Marc James Roels, Niki Lindroth von Bahr, and Paloma Baeza—but sustains the anthology’s deadpan, offbeat vibe. The first chapter follows an impoverished 19th-century family that is gifted a mansion by a land developer with a sadistic ulterior motive; the second tracks the misfortunes of an anthropomorphic rodent in the present day as his efforts to flip the refurbished house are complicated by a couple prospective buyers; finally, a cat tries to defend her dream home from rising sea levels. Is the movie a comment on materialism? The inevitability of nature? Some combination of both? Whatever your takeaway from this bizarre gem, the animation will endlessly impress you. The first act’s wiry wool puppets lend the film a texture only stop-motion can translate to the screen. It’s a shame “The House” wasn’t listed on the roster, just released, of titles eligible to compete for Best Animated Feature. The movie boasts a 97% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a voice cast that includes Mia Goth, Matthew Goode, Jarvis Cocker and Helena Bonham Carter. Available on Netflix

#matthew goode #the house

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synchronousemma · 2 years

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Sunday, 26th June: Mrs. Churchill is no more

Read the post and comment on WordPress

Read: Vol. 3, ch. 9 [45]; pp. 254–255 (“The following day” to “with mutual forbearance”).

Context

An express arrives at Randalls telling of Mrs. Churchill’s death.

In July, Frank writes a letter referencing this as “‘the event of the 26th ult. [of last month]’” (vol. 3, ch. 14 [50]; p. 289); an express sent from Richmond to Highbury would arrive the same day it was sent.

An “express” is a letter that is carried directly from sender to receiver, rather than being carried from post office to post office; it is thus quicker to arrive and more expensive to send. Mr. Weston’s resolution “that his mourning should be as handsome as possible” and Mrs. Weston’s contemplation of “hems” are in reference to a tradition of wearing mourning clothes for some time after the death of a family member. The reference to Goldsmith (“when lovely woman stoops to folly, she has nothing to do but to die”) is drawn from The Vicar of Wakefield.

The Norton edition has “not spoken of with compassionate allowances” (p. 254); the 1816 publication has (what seems to be more compliant with the context) “now spoken of” (p. 156).

Note that the section “Murder, She Wrote” contains spoilers.

Readings and Interpretations

Murder, She Wrote

Leland Monk gives a summary of the events of the past few days as they impacted Jane and Frank, which is worth quoting at length:

Frank Churchill’s engagement to Jane Fairfax had to be kept secret while his aunt was alive because Mrs. Churchill would certainly not approve of such a connection and would no doubt deprive Frank of the considerable fortune he stood to inherit if he married against her wishes. Mrs. Churchill had been in ill health for awhile and apparently Frank and Jane were holding out until her death, at which time they could appeal to her more tractable husband.

[...] All the tension and aggravation of their secret understanding came to a head in a quarrel that made both of them seriously consider ending the engagement. The private quarrel between the two lovers was played out in the public arena the next day during the disastrous picnic to Box Hill. Jane was cold and severe, while Frank flirted outrageously with Emma in front of his fiancée. Jane conveyed to him “in a form of words perfectly intelligible” that she was quite willing to end their acquaintance: “I would be understood to mean, that it can be only weak, irresolute characters, (whose happiness must always be at the mercy of chance,) who will suffer an unfortunate acquaintance to be an inconvenience, an oppression for ever.” Frank responded by proposing to Emma (but for Jane’s ears) that he would go abroad for a couple of years—the usual way gentlemen who can afford to do so extricate themselves from unpleasant intimacies. Frank left Highbury that afternoon, returning to Richmond without patching things up, and Jane wrote to him next day breaking off the engagement. Their relationship under the conditions of secrecy had reached a dead end. If those conditions did not somehow change, they were almost certainly going to part forever. (pp. 343–4)

Monk goes on to argue that Emma is a mystery in a different way than other critics suggest—rather than asking us to solve riddles such as “whom does this charade designate” and “who is Harriet in love with,” it is a murder mystery. He writes:

Mrs. Churchill died two days later, not only at a suspiciously convenient time but of a suspiciously unknown cause. Here is Jane Austen’s announcement of her death; and notice the unusual attention given to time and circumstance: “Though her nephew had had no particular reason to hasten back on her account, she had not lived above six-and-thirty hours after his return. A sudden seizure of a different nature from anything foreboded by her general state, had carried her off after a short struggle. The great Mrs. Churchill was no more” [vol. 3, ch. 9 [45]; p. 254]. In the same sentence we are told of Frank’s return and his aunt’s death; the syntax would seem to suggest a cause and effect relationship—Frank’s return precipitated his aunt’s unexplained death.

[...] The evidence suggesting that Mrs. Churchill was murdered by her nephew is not conclusive, but given the timing of her death and the motive, opportunity, and psychology of Frank Churchill, it is remarkable that even his most severe critics consider his aunt's passing simply “fortuitous,” a bit of “luck,” “a happy and timely accident.” (pp. 344, 349)

This oversight may be caused in part by our understanding that a novelist may “kill” characters off for plot reasons (“the possibility of actual murder in Emma is subsumed by novelistic conventions which have inured us to death as a way of resolving plot complications”), as well as by our assumption that murder is not something that can happen in an Austen novel (however much we are used to the “constant and corrective ‘mortification’ of an Austen character,” a more everyday type of violence that is “especially directed against women,” p. 350). For Monk, though, the most interesting aspect of this reading is how

the suggestion of murder in Emma indicates how completely Jane Austen practices what she preaches against, making her in many ways Frank Churchill’s accomplice in crime. That which the novel’s moral code condemns in Frank is clearly evident in his creator’s own novelistic practices: all of the puzzles in the novel, and especially those posed by the writer to the reader, show how Austen, like her character, enjoys playing games that mystify and deceive. (ibid.)

The Hypochondriacs Are All Right

Anita Soloway writes that Mrs. Churchill’s death is one example of how the “war, illness, accident, painful reversals of fortune—so prominent in Persuasion—already hover on [Emma’s] periphery” (n.p.). Mr. Woodhouse, who “warns us of the precariousness of life,” therefore seems worth paying some attention to:

Whatever the source of his anxieties may be, Mr. Woodhouse functions at once as a classic comic killjoy—“’The sooner every party breaks up, the better’” [vol. 2, ch. 7 [25]; p. 136]—and as a foreboding voice, persistently warning both the other characters and the readers of how fragile our lives really are. His warnings are vindicated not only by Jane Fairfax’s nearly fatal accident but also by the unexpected death of Mrs. Churchill from “[a] sudden seizure of a different nature from any thing foreboded by her general state” [p. 254]. (ibid.)

These peripheral “examples of the vulnerability of our lives,” however, are softened precisely by the fact that they are peripheral:

Arguably the most pitiable figure of Emma, John Abdy never actually appears in it but is only mentioned once in passing by Miss Bates. While talked of much more frequently, Mrs. Churchill, the only character who dies in the course of Emma, also never actually appears. […] Jane’s [accident] predates the action of the novel, and the information about it is buried in Miss Bates’s chatter. The deaths of Lieutenant Fairfax and of the mothers of Emma, Jane, and Frank occurred, of course, many years before the novel begins. By creating temporal and emotional distances between the reader and these characters and events, by relegating them to the outskirts of the novel, Austen carefully subordinates the vision of the fragility of our lives to the novel's primary focus on Emma’s moral development. (ibid.)

DA Miller similarly notes Austen’s “proscription […] that no major character may die, and no character whatsoever may die ‘on stage,’” arguing that it “frustrate[s] any possible development of the large-looming, but abidingly static, theme of hypochondria” (p. 79). “[T]he decease of the hypochondriac Mrs. Churchill” does, however, make the dual-edged point that hypochondria is pointless foolishness that nonetheless has some basis in reality (FN 37, p. 106):

For only [hypochondria’s] antiphrasis of death could unfold the folly of hypochondria: the ultimate irrelevance of our minor or mendacious maladies to the great killer that, despite the fuss we make over them, they don't even have the merit of preparing us for [“of a different nature than any thing foreboded…”]. And only the antiphrasis of death could let us grasp the grain of truth that, in among its salts and vials, hypochondria nonetheless contains: that we are indeed always suffering from something that will be ‘the death of us’—life. But like disaster, death […] is “news… to throw every thing else into the back-ground.” (pp. 79–80)

Can Mrs. Churchill be assumed to be a hypochondriac, though, as these critics take for granted? Mr. Weston has seemed to think so—but as her illness, real or imaginary, is standing in the way of his seeing Frank, his personal stake in the matter needs to be considered. And, as we have already seen, Frank once “could not be prevailed on by all his father’s doubts, to say that her complaints were merely imaginary” (because he was more familiar with the nature of her complaints than Mr. Weston was? or because he was trying to present himself as the image of respectful gratitude?) (vol. 3, ch. 1 [19]; p. 206). The evidence that Mr. Weston tries to summon, that Mrs. Churchill was one day “too weak to get into her conservatory” under her own power and another day “so impatient to be in town, that she means to sleep only two nights on the road” means just about nothing, given that it is in the nature of much chronic illness to be changeable [vol. 2, ch. 18 [36]; p. 200]. John Wiltshire writes:

The mystery, or undecidability, of Mrs Churchill’s illness is not resolved, either, by her death. ‘Mrs Churchill, after being disliked at least twenty-five years, was now spoken of with compassionate allowances. In one point she was fully justified. She had never been admitted before to be seriously ill. The event acquitted her of all the fancifulness and all the selfishness of imaginary complaints’ [p. 254]. She is now admitted into Highbury discourse on its own terms as ‘Poor Mrs Churchill!' But Highbury is obtuse and the ambiguity persists, since she is carried off, as the narrator makes occasion to say, ‘by a sudden seizure of a different nature from any thing foreboded by her general state’. How one reads Mrs Churchill’s illness depends then upon one’s own interests, position and point of view—perhaps one’s own state of health. (p. 122)

At any rate it seems foolish to assume that one knows the truth either way, regarding a novel that not only makes a motif out of robust versus ill health (see Wiltshire) but also repeatedly dramatizes the dangers of assuming that one knows how to decode the world around oneself.

She Stoops to Folly

The narrator paraphrases Oliver Goldsmith in an aside upon Mrs. Churchill’s death: “Goldsmith tells us, that when lovely woman stoops to folly, she has nothing to do but to die; and when she stoops to be disagreeable, it is equally to be recommended as a clearer of ill fame” (p. 254). Marvin Mudrick attributes offhand remarks about death of this sort to “cruelty” and “malice” on Austen’s part (qtd. in Johnson, p. 159); Frances Restuccia, though she does not condemn Austen for the joke, attributes the sentence to “a surprising snide reference against [Mrs. Churchill]” from the narrator (p. 453).

For Claudia Johnson, however, the aside is not an insult but “a stunning, deadly serious piece of social criticism” (p. 160). She elaborates on the literary and social context of Goldsmith’s remark:

“Stooping to folly” is, of course, a euphemism for being seduced and abandoned. In English novels of sensibility, the deaths of lovely women—through an act of suicide or, which amounts to a similar thing, through a mortal or near-mortal superabundance of remorseful feeling—almost always follow this form of disgrace, although death also awaits women of feeling who have been wronged by an unfeeling world in less compromising ways. (ibid.)

Thus “Austen’s novels defy and discredit this call [for the death of women who do not satisfy a set of narrow conventions], not because death is impolite, as Janeites might have it, but because to satisfy readers’ cravings for deathbed scenes would mean consenting to social assumptions that make such scenes appear desirable and natural in the first place” (ibid.).

Discussion Questions

Is it feasible that Frank Churchill could have murdered his aunt? What evidence should such a case be tried on (textual evidence, evidence of motive, evidence of genre)?

Does Mrs. Churchill’s death prove, as Highbury at large professes, that she has not been a hypochondriac all along? What is Emma’s stance on hypochondria?

What is the purpose of the Goldsmith reference in this section?

Bibliography

Austen, Jane. Emma (Norton Critical Edition). 3rd ed. Ed. Stephen M. Parrish. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, [1815] 2000.

Johnson, Claudia L. “A ‘Sweet Face as White as Death’: Jane Austen and the Politics of Female Sensibility.” Novel 22.2 (Winter 1989), pp. 159–74. DOI: 10.2307/1345801.

Miller, D. A. Jane Austen, or the Secret of Style. Princeton: Princeton University Press (2003).

Monk, Leland. “Murder She Wrote: The Mystery of Jane Austen’s Emma.” The Journal of Narrative Technique 20.3 (Fall 1990), pp. 342–53. DOI: 10.2307/30225305.

Restuccia, Frances L. “A Black Morning: Kristevan Melancholia in Jane Austen’s Emma.” American Imago 51.4 (Winter 1994), pp. 447–69.

Soloway, Anita. “The Darkness of Emma.” Persuasions 38 (2016), pp. 81–94.

Wiltshire, John. “Emma: The Picture of Health.” In Jane Austen and the Body. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1992), pp. 110–54. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511586248.005.

#Emma #Jane Austen #Mrs. Churchill #Mr. Weston #Mrs. Weston #e

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tea-with-evan-and-me · 1 year

Note

Emma roberts fans saying evan is a bad actor has got to be the most delusional thing in existence. There is no reasoning with these people. They are beyond help.

evan peters: critical acclamation

emma roberts: twitter users acclamation

poor evan, with his emmy and golden globe awards and record breaking netflix series.. if only he could have the approval of adolescent twitter users with newspaper where their brain should be </3

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olko71 · 8 months

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New Post has been published on All about business online

New Post has been published on https://yaroreviews.info/2023/09/rosebank-oil-field-what-is-the-row-over-the-project

Rosebank oil field: What is the row over the project?

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The decision to approve drilling at a controversial UK oil field has been condemned by environmental campaigners but hailed by supporters as a big step in bolstering the UK’s energy security.

Rosebank, off the Scottish coast, has been given the go ahead by regulators the North Sea Transition Authority.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said it was the “right long-term decision” for securing oil supplies in the UK.

But critics said it would harm climate change targets and not reduce bills.

What is Rosebank?

Rosebank is an oil and gas field which lies about 80 miles north-west of Shetland and is one of the largest undeveloped discoveries in UK waters.

It is said to contain up to 300 million barrels of oil and is owned by Norwegian energy giant Equinor and British firm Ithaca Energy.

The approval for drilling comes after the government said it would issue hundreds of new licences for oil and gas exploration in the North Sea.

What will it produce?

The field is expected to start producing oil from 2026.

If drilling does start on time, Rosebank could account for 8% of the UK’s total oil production between 2026 and 2030.

Roughly 245 million barrels will be produced in the first five years of drilling, with the remaining 55 million being extracted between 2032 and 2051.

Rosebank oil field given go-ahead by regulators

Though oil is the main product, the site will also produce gas.

About 1,600 jobs are expected to be created during the peak of construction. Long term, the operation will create 450 jobs.

Despite oil and gas output in the North Sea having declined in the last 20 years, the industry still employs more than 200,000 people

Will it mean lower energy bills in the UK?

Oil and gas from UK waters is not necessarily used here – it is sold on global markets.

What Rosebank produces will be sold at world market prices, so the project will not cut energy prices for UK consumers.

The Norwegian state oil company Equinor – which is the majority owner of Rosebank – has confirmed that.

“If the UK needs Rosebank oil, it will go to the UK through open market mechanisms”, said Arne Gurtner, Equinor’s senior vice president for the UK.

Emma Pinchbeck, chief executive of the industry body Energy UK, said the long-term solution for UK bills and energy security “is in reducing our gas demand”, rather then extracting new fossil fuels.

The government’s independent advisers on climate change, the Climate Change Committee (CCC), has said similar in response to the government’s plans to develop the UK’s remaining offshore oil and gas reserves.

Last year, it wrote to the then-chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, saying more domestic oil and gas extraction would have “at most, a marginal effect on prices”.

Oil also tends to be sent around the world to be refined – the UK does not have the capacity to refine all its own oil-based products.

Where does the UK get its energy and electricity?

What does net zero mean?

Why is the site controversial?

The plan has faced widespread criticism due to its impact on climate change.

Last month 50 MPs and peers from all major parties warned approving the project would be “deeply irresponsible” and risked putting climate targets out of reach and would “nothing” to reduce household bills.

On Tuesday, the International Energy Agency renewed its assertion that no new oil and gas projects are needed if the world is to achieve its climate goals.

Its updated projection suggests fossil fuel demand will fall 80% by 2050 as new solar power and electric cars continue to grow.

Protests have been carried out against Rosebank in the run-up to its approval across the country, with some groups, such as Surfers Against Sewage voicing concerns over the impact of drilling on sea life.

Broadcaster Chris Packham has called the development an “act of war against life on Earth”.

How much tax do oil and gas firms pay?

Firms in the oil and gas sector pay a higher rate of tax than in other industries. Currently, companies such Equinor and Ithaca have to pay 75% on their UK profits until 2028.

This includes a 40% rate of corporation tax – much higher than the standard 25% most UK businesses pay. The government then imposed a 35% windfall tax, called the Energy Profits Levy, on the oil and gas sector in 2022 as firms made huge profits following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

However, oil and gas firms can reduce their tax bills by reinvesting their profits in new North Sea energy projects, thanks to a government incentive scheme designed to support the sector.

Equinor and Ithaca have invested $3.8bn (£3.1bn) in the first phase of the Rosebank project and will be able to claim back 91p for every £1 invested, but will ultimately pay a 75% tax rate on the project’s profits.

How will this impact net zero plans?

The UK has committed to reach net zero, which means no longer adding to the total amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, by 2050.

The oil and gas regulator, the North Sea Transition Authority, said it took “net zero considerations into account” in approving the Rosebank project.

The government is adamant that it will meet its climate targets despite the field coming online, pointing out that transitioning to net zero does allow for some oil and gas to be used so long as the emissions are offset.

However, the International Energy Agency (IEA), which advises governments on energy policy, has said big oil and gas projects like Rosebank should not be needed because demand for fossil fuels is forecast to fall towards 2050.

What are politicians saying?

The UK government has welcomed the decision, with Energy Security Secretary Claire Coutinho saying oil and gas are part of the “mix on the path to net zero”.

She has argued it “makes sense” for the UK to use its own oil supplies and will enable the country to have “greater energy independence, making us more secure against tyrants like (Vladimir) Putin”.

Sir Keir Starmer has confirmed that Labour will not revoke the licence for the oil field if it wins the next election. He said that allowing exploration to go ahead would provide “stability” to the economy.

The Liberal Democrats are not expected to make a comment on the licence, but a party source has said that their position remains that Rosebank should not go ahead.

Meanwhile, Scotland’s First Minister Humza Yousaf has said he is “disappointed” by the decision and that he is concerned that the oil extracted will end up overseas.

Green MP Caroline Lucas saying the move was “morally obscene”, and called the move the “greatest act of environmental vandalism in my lifetime”.